


Intersections: Everything in its Place

by Caedus501



Series: Intersections [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Slow Burn, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 09:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caedus501/pseuds/Caedus501
Summary: “Here we go again,” Cassian said to himself and schooled his expression into a mask of cold indifference tempered by a hint of unease for his general situation.  He put a hand to his still painful shoulder wound to help sell the part of injured, yet heroic, Imperial captain, then he hit the hatch release lever.The cool, sterile, recycled air of the Destroyer hit Cassian’s face and he breathed deeply, letting the sense memory guide him further into the role of Willix.  He climbed carefully out of the pod, making sure to give the stormtroopers on guard no reason to fire.  Jyn followed him out a bit less sedately, but she held herself in the least threatening manner he’d seen from her since Wobani so he figured she was at least trying.  Cassian decided to let the commander speak first and set the tone and direction of the conversation so that Cassian could steer it forward from there.The commander looked the pod’s former occupants up and down, his eyes narrowed and lips slightly pursed in consideration.  “Captain Willix, I presume?” he said, raising one skeptical eyebrow.***Jyn and Cassian must rely on one another to escape the Empire and other dangers in the wake of the Battle of Scarif.





	Intersections: Everything in its Place

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this one took forever. Real life punched me in the face and then my new summer schedule seriously reduced my writing time, but here you are nonetheless! The last part of my Intersections series! Thank you to everyone who has been reading this whole story and so many thanks to everyone who commented on and kudo'd past installments. It was really fun and interesting to see your reactions to this series. I hope you all enjoy the way I wrapped things up.

_Intersections_

Part 5: _Everything in its Place_

**0 BBY**

 

The shudder of the escape pod as it continued to be pulled in by the tractor beam of the Imperial Star Destroyer _Devastator_ had all of Cassian’s senses on alert, even if there was nothing he could do about it.  All he knew was that he and Jyn were running out of time, fast, and they needed to have their cover for having been on a ship that had beamed a large file to a Rebel ship ready and able to withstand questioning.  The Imperial uniforms they had stolen and the identichips Jyn had prepared were extremely helpful, but if their stories differed in anyway, an Imperial interrogator, or even just an analyst, would spot the lie in a heartbeat.

“Jyn, we need to get a few things straight.  First, names.”

Jyn’s bright gray-green eyes were hard and determined as she answered.  “You are Captain Anton Willix, personal aide to Director Krennic and captain of his shuttle.  My name is Kaia Solamar and I am the pilot of said shuttle.  Both of us were recruited from former positions for the ‘special assignment’ of working for Krennic.”

“Good.  We went to Scarif by the Director’s request where, amidst the confusion, a small group of Rebels captured the shuttle.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“How many Rebels?” she asked again, her gaze pointed and calculating.

Cassian blinked at her.  At least she seemed to be taking this cover story business seriously.  Although, he supposed she had spent the last several years of her life living very carefully constructed lies, so even if she had no experience with behaving like an Imperial, as he had, she could probably pull off being Kaia Solamar if given enough detail.  Cassian felt a touch of tension leave his shoulders with the realization.

“Three,” he answered.  “We stick as close to the truth as possible.  It will be easier to remember.”

“So, three Rebels killed Krennic on the platform and then attacked us and knocked us out?” Jyn said, sounding unsure.  It was a bit suspect, a group of raiding Rebels not properly securing the ship, but it was likely the Empire would overlook the inconsistency given their propensity to assume all Rebels were incompetent.

“It will have to do.”  He offered a shrug.  “We recovered to find them sending some kind of transmission,” he paused as the pod pitched violently.  He and Jyn shared an apprehensive glance as they passed through the Destroyer’s shields.  Cassian sped up his fake summary of events.  “We retook the vessel, I was shot in the struggle, but there was too much damage, barely any power, and no comms.  We made it to the pod and away before the whole thing blew.  Got it?”  He had diverged from the truth regarding the power and the functionality of the comm array for plausibility and wanted to be certain she had caught that.

Jyn’s eyes were clear and focused as she gave him an affirming nod.

A few last instructions then they’d just have to hope for the best.  “Answer any direct questions as concisely as possible.  Don’t volunteer any extra information, and let me do most of the talking, I know how to handle these guys.”  Cassian did a last minute check of his appearance to be sure it would tally with his story.  “Oh, and try not to punch anyone,” he added as a precaution.

Jyn made a face.  “Obviously,” she muttered.  She looked one more time out the viewport at the massive hangar that was coming into view with its battalion of troopers in strict formation and a handful of TIEs in precise landing positions.  After a heavy sigh she produced something from one of her cargo pockets and held it out to him.  “I think you should probably take this.”

Cassian looked at the datacard in her hand then up at her slightly pained expression.  He raised one puzzled brow to invite her to explain herself. 

“I have more confidence in your abilities to bluff your way through Darth Vader’s ship than I have in mine,” she said through gritted teeth.  It seemed to take a lot for her to admit it.

“Jyn, if one of us is caught, the other is done for as well.  We’re in this together.  All the way, remember?”  He held her gaze for just a moment.

“Just take the damn datacard, Cassian.  They’ll be on us any minute!”

Cassian relented and took the offered datacard and, after a moment’s consideration, tucked it under his belt near where regulation demanded Imperial officers store their identichips.  He hoped the location would be enough to confuse a scanner and hide the card’s existence.  Jyn closely followed his movements with her eyes, clearly memorizing the location of the plans. 

“Pod TH-X11-38 prepare for docking procedure,” a voice said over the comm.  Another jolt passed through the small craft as some kind of docking clamp on a long arm extended from a side bulkhead and fastened around the pod.

“Docking arm engaged,” Cassian reported to the Destroyer.

They began moving again, the pod now being guided through the force field at the hangar’s entry point and gently deposited on a small support structure on one end of the bay.  Cassian had been wondering how they were going to land the pod since it lacked any sort of basic control system.  It was basically just a bubble of air with an emergency comms unit, thrusters that got you maybe a few kilometers in the direction of the nearest planet, if you were lucky, and the ability to withstand passage through most planets’ atmospheres.  Apparently, the Empire had taken the need to pick up stragglers into account when designing the _Imperial I-_ class Star Destroyer.

“Remember,” he said to Jyn one last time while he watched a squad of gleaming white stormtroopers led by an olive green uniformed commander stalk toward the pod.  The man was tall and had surprisingly red hair under his officer’s cap with sharp features that gave him a sort of pinched look.  Cassian was instantly put on guard by the quick intelligence he saw behind the man’s light eyes. He turned back to Jyn, “Don’t say anything —”

“That I don’t have to.  I’ve got it,” Jyn finished for him.

She sounded tense, understandably so, but he risked a glance at her and saw that she had one hand clasped around the crystal necklace he recalled seeing on her even back when she had been going by Kestrel Dawn and Tanith Pontha.  Some part of his mind that wasn’t already focused on calling up the identity and mannerisms of Lieutenant – no _Captain_ – Willix noted that the stone must have some significance or sentimental value to her.  Maybe, if they made it off the _Devastator_ alive, he would ask her about it one day.

“Here we go again,” Cassian said to himself and schooled his expression into a mask of cold indifference tempered by a hint of unease for his general situation.  He put a hand to his still painful shoulder wound to help sell the part of injured, yet heroic, Imperial captain, then he hit the hatch release lever.

The cool, sterile, recycled air of the Destroyer hit Cassian’s face and he breathed deeply, letting the sense memory guide him further into the role of Willix.  He climbed carefully out of the pod, making sure to give the stormtroopers on guard no reason to fire.  Jyn followed him out a bit less sedately, but she held herself in the least threatening manner he’d seen from her since Wobani so he figured she was at least trying.  Cassian decided to let the commander speak first and set the tone and direction of the conversation so that Cassian could steer it forward from there.

The commander looked the pod’s former occupants up and down, his eyes narrowed and lips slightly pursed in consideration.

“Captain Willix, I presume?” he said, raising one skeptical eyebrow.

“Indeed, sir.”

“I had your file brought up while you were being brought in.  You’ve been listed as ‘missing in action’ for over a year and you were last seen with just the rank of _Lieutenant_ ,” the commander said with a special emphasis on Cassian’s former rank within the Imperial Navy.

“Yet, here I am, sir.  You cannot fault me for erroneous record keeping.”

“Perhaps not,” he paused, then snapped out, “Search them!”

Two stormtroopers stepped forward, one held a scanning device, but the other was empty handed.  First Cassian, then Jyn was thoroughly scanned and patted down by both troopers.  Jyn had nothing on her except the modified identichip, so she was quickly cleared.  Cassian on the other hand, tried not to think about the datacard hidden right next to his identichip, just a layer of his tunic keeping it from view.  He was counting on the imprecise nature of the scanner to make it seem like the chip he turned over was the only thing being detected.

“Ah, good.  Identification.  Give those to me,” the commander said and plucked their chips from the trooper’s hands.

Cassian suspected he was trying to catch them off guard, but Jyn’s quick thinking back in the shuttle meant they were both prepared for this part of the officer’s interrogation.  Both he and Jyn waited in tense silence as their records were examined.

“Special assignment?” the man asked incredulously.  “Oh, Krennic, of course.  He would neglect to have the official records updated for something like this.  He most likely finds such tasks beneath him.”

Cassian kept his face blank during this little speech.  Clearly there was no love lost between the Director and the crew of the _Devastator_.  Even if Cassian was supposed to have been serving Krennic, he decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to dissuade the commander of his presumptions of Krennic’s sense of self-importance.  He handed Cassian back his identichip and turned his attention to Jyn’s records.

“Hmm… Kaia Solamar, pilot.  What type of craft do you fly?"

“Most recently, an Imperial _Delta_ -class T-3c passenger shuttle.  Krennic’s own, sir.”  She tacked the “sir” on a bit belatedly at the end which showed her lack of familiarity with military formality, but it could have also been taken as insouciance by the officer.

The commander’s penetrating, ice blue eyes studied Jyn, as though looking for a crack in her story.  “And where, pray tell, is Director Krennic if not on his own escape pod?”  He turned his head sharply to Cassian, clearly expecting the answer to come from the higher ranked of the two stragglers.

As he had rehearsed with Jyn, Cassian relayed the story of Krennic’s demise on Scarif, and the subsequent Rebel takeover of the ship and their own heroic efforts to stop the enemy.  The commander questioned him about the transmission made from the shuttle, but Cassian side- stepped that particular avenue of discussion with a few well-placed words.

“I don’t know what they were sending, sir.  We could find no evidence in the communications log and we didn’t have time to perform an extensive search.  I did notice that the tight-beam array was locked onto a disabled Rebel ship.  Whatever they sent clearly didn’t get far.”

“You do know how implausible that all sounds don’t you?” the commander asked.

Cassian reminded himself to breathe and remain calm.  Beside him, Jyn’s hand twitched toward where her blaster normally hung.  He hoped their interrogator didn’t notice.

“Sir?” Cassian inquired, just to get the commander talking again.

“The most likely story is that you two are the very Rebels you claim killed Director Krennic and supposedly knocked you, or at least the actual pilot and captain of the shuttle, out to assume control of the ship.”  Cassian felt his heart rate kick up at the commander’s words, but he managed to keep his countenance through sheer force of will and many years of practice.  “The problem is, with the Scarif base destroyed and Krennic’s shuttle blown to bits, there is virtually no way to confirm or deny your story.  I shall inform Lord Vader of your presence and report on the Director’s death either way.  Until further information can be gathered, you will both be—”

“Willix?”  A voice from across the hangar cut off the commander’s pronouncement.  Cassian’s back went ramrod straight at the sound of someone calling his cover name.  His gaze shifted to a point somewhere over the shoulders of the commander and his squad of stormtroopers, and focused on a man in another green uniform wearing a slightly stunned expression.

“Lieutenant!” the commander called, then beckoned the man over.

Cassian searched his memory frantically, trying to recall the officer’s name and how they apparently knew each other.  Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian saw Jyn regard the newcomer with calculation, as though deciding whether or not this man was here to help them or damn them both to imprisonment.

“Lieutenant, you know the captain here?”

The young officer snapped to attention.  “I do, sir.  We served together aboard the _Contrite_ before Willix was transferred.  I was promoted and stationed here not long after that.”

“Transferred? Where to?” the commander asked a little too intensely for Cassian’s liking.  His mind was still working to place the lieutenant whom he must have known as an ensign.

“I never knew, commander.  I’m in the signals corps and Willix was often on the bridge or the lower command deck.  Our paths didn’t cross too often.  Usually just in the mess or during a fitness rotation.”

That finally jogged Cassian’s memory enough to come up with the lieutenant’s name.  “Indeed, Lieutenant Vilmar and I met while I was running an errand for Admiral Trier, for whom I sometimes acted as an aide.  The bridge was experiencing some form of interference on all comm channels from within the ship itself.  I asked Vilmar for his assistance in clearing it up.”

“Faulty wiring,” the lieutenant shrugged.

Cassian could tell the commander was trying to come to a conclusion regarding the veracity of his identity as Willix, so Cassian held his tongue and let the officer process.  On the one hand, Cassian’s documentation was completely irregular, but on the other hand, here was a member of the _Devastator_ ’s own crew vouching for him.  Beside him, Jyn was so tense she had practically stopped breathing.  He didn’t dare make a move to comfort her or remind her to take in oxygen, not only because it would be impossible to hide, but because she looked ready to spring a meter into the air at the merest touch.  He also didn’t want to risk the commander turning his interrogation on her as he seemed content enough to ignore her at the moment.

After a solid minute of suspense during which Vilmar looked increasingly confused and Cassian continued to clutch at his blaster wound, which was now throbbing painfully as a surprising amount of blood for a supposedly cauterized wound soaked into his uniform, the commander finally released a sigh of decision.

“Very well.  Lieutenant, thank you for your assistance, you may return to your duties.”

“Sir!” Vilmar clicked his booted heels together in salute and walked off, throwing one last questioning glance at Cassian over his shoulder.  Cassian could only give the man a nod of thanks.  Privately he felt he probably owed the man a drink in the commissary at the very least for what amounted to saving his and Jyn’s lives.  Vilmar was a decent man, all things considered, even if he was on the wrong side.  He had joined the Navy simply because he had felt there were no better options available to him on the lackluster Outer Rim world he called home.  Cassian thought Vilmar could have done a little more research before signing up for the Academy, but it was a pretty common story throughout the Imperial ranks.  At least Vilmar wasn’t a zealot like some of the others Cassian had been forced to rub shoulders with while undercover as Willix, he was just misguided.

Cassian turned his attention back to the commander in time to hear him giving Jyn her orders.  “Solamar, go check in with the current flight officer on duty.  She will debrief you properly and figure out what to do with you,” the commander said with a general gesture towards where Cassian knew Flight Control was located a few decks above.  “I’ll have you both know that we haven’t time to ferry you about the galaxy to your next posting nor do we have a shuttle to spare at the moment, so we’ll just have to make do with you aboard the _Devastator_ for the time being.  Dismissed, Solamar!”

Jyn somewhat awkwardly copied Vilmar’s parting salute and wandered off in the direction the commander had indicated.  She shot a last look at Cassian that betrayed her alarm at their sudden separation, but she did as instructed and soon Cassian felt the full attention of the officer and the squad of troopers back on him where it belonged.

Oddly enough, the officer appeared to have settled slightly since Vilmar’s interruption.  “Get yourself to the medical wing and get that taken care of,” he said, using his chin to gesture at Cassian’s shoulder wound.  “Then report to Central Command for a complete debrief.  I’m sure Krennic’s death will shake a few things up.”

Just before Cassian could salute and make for the well-stocked medbay, a luxury the Rebellion could only claim every once in a while, a voice came over the shipwide comm system.

“All hands prepare for the jump to hyperspace.”

“Ah, it looks like we’ve finally got a line on our quarry,” the commander said, sounding smug.  “Those Rebels won’t escape us.”

Cassian willed his body to show no reaction, but he suddenly felt as if the floor had been removed from beneath his feet.  If they were tracking Rebel ships then they were either after the _Tantive IV_ and the Death Star plans or attempting to follow a ship back to Base One on Yavin IV.  Either circumstance was cause for worry.

“Perhaps today’s losses on Scarif will be a gateway to a much larger victory,” Cassian struggled to say.

“I believe that is the idea.  Lord Vader will find out what information those Rebels stole.  That corvette that got away may be agile, but it has no hope of outrunning us.”

Cassian swallowed past the dryness in his throat at the prospect of the infamous dark cloaked figure of Darth Vader reclaiming the Death Star plans before they ever reached the Rebellion.  “Yes, sir,” he forced out.

“On your way, Willix.  I expect we’ll be busy soon.”  With that parting directive, the commander signaled to his squad of stormtroopers and retreated across the hangar, leaving Cassian to make his own way through the ship.  Part of him wanted to turn around and find Jyn, but he didn’t know if the commander was still keeping tabs on him somehow, waiting for the suspicious “Willix” to make a mistake.  With just a quick glance toward the far lifts in hopes of spotting Jyn one last time – she was nowhere in view – he made his way toward the small railcar system that ran the full length of the ship’s hangar bay, past rows and rows of TIE fighters, troop transport ships, gunships, and even the large walkers the Empire favored for ground assault, and ended at a second bank of turbolifts that granted greater access to the upper levels of the Destroyer, including the medbay.

As he walked through the ship careful to step aside for higher ranked officers or to stay out of the path of troop movements, Cassian assessed the state of the crew after the action at Scarif.  Brief snatches of conversation he picked up in passing told him that the majority of those stationed onboard didn’t have a clear idea of what was going on.  The general story as far as Cassian could tell was that they had come out of hyperspace to a battle above the tropical planet, which they had then helped bring to a swift end.  Now though, the ship was chasing somebody with an urgency that came from the very top of the chain of command, but no one knew who was on the ship or where it was going.

Cassian didn’t know where the _Tantive IV_ had headed after it escaped the battle over Scarif, but until he started to hear the name “Yavin IV” bandied about, he couldn’t allow himself to worry too much.  If he started thinking about the possible destruction of the Rebellion, of his home, he would lose his ability to function at full capacity, and being in the middle of a Star Destroyer that housed crack troops as well as Darth Vader required all of his focus.

The _Devastator’s_ medbay was nearly identical to the one aboard the _Contrite_ , along with every other Star Destroyer in the fleet.  Ubiquitous gray walls and bright lights.  Temporary screens that could be moved around and adjusted as necessary, stood around two of the eight beds, with more panels pushed against the wall, ready and waiting to be brought out.  Machines that monitored vital signs sat dark by each bed.  Cassian knew this was just the simple observation and outpatient area, and there were complex operating and scanning theatres beyond the doors he could see.  For his blaster wound, all that was really required was a thorough cleaning, a generous application of bacta, and maybe a painkiller or stim shot.  Just enough to take the edge off and allow his body to begin healing on its own.

His main objective at present was to find out where they were going and figure out a way to get both him and Jyn off the ship in such a way that wouldn’t invite pursuit.  Whatever plan he came up with, his identity as Willix would have to be burned for good.  There was no way he would be able to show up at another Imperial outpost after a second unexplained absence and get away with it.  After this debacle Cassian had very little desire to spend time emulating an Imperial officer anyway, so the loss of Willix didn’t bother him too much.

While a medical droid attended to his shoulder, Cassian considered his next course of action.  He probably wouldn’t get away with not reporting for a complete debrief, an activity that would occupy a significant amount of time and produce little in the way of practical intel for him, but there was still the question of after.  He didn’t think seeking out Vilmar would yield much information since the man worked mainly in the signals and communications station and not on the bridge.  It would be the safest option though.  Still he figured if he could insinuate himself into the ranks of the commanding officers’ aides somehow he’d be off to a good start.

Before he left the medbay a droid came in and handed Cassian a new uniform in his size, and the requisition request made in his name that he had to officially sign.  His measurements were clearly still in the system somewhere.  As he looked over the datapad he saw that his status had been changed to “active” and his deployment information was listed as “Support, Star Destroyer, _Devastator_.”  That would probably complicate things unless he could get a message to Jyn to do something about their recorded presence aboard the ship.  He knew from experience that she had a method of disappearing from Imperial notice.

The debrief turned out to be just as long and detailed as he feared it would be, based on his previous experiences with the Imperial Navy.  The commander had been right to suspect that Krennic’s death would affect, however minutely, the Imperial Military’s power structure.  He did hear a mutter of “That will make Tarkin happy,” from an observing aide and figured there was a rivalry of some kind between the men.  Such things weren’t uncommon, and anyone as highly ranked as Krennic or Grand Moff Tarkin was certain to have their professional differences.  Add to that the apparent distaste Vader’s crew had for the Director and it all made for a very intriguing political situation.  Cassian didn’t know if the information was important, but he filed it away for potential future use.

He was once again closely questioned about the transmission made from the shuttle to the Rebel ship, but it was less about whether he or Jyn had been responsible for making it and more about his supposed inability to find out what information the Rebels had gotten their hands on.  Cassian sincerely hoped that he and Jyn were telling similar stories about there being no time and a general sense of panic about the situation.

Hell, he just hoped Jyn had found Flight Control without getting caught somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Near the end of the interview Cassian knew he had to take the chance to position himself where he could gather the most information.  It was a risk, but hiding among the hundreds of bustling personnel would only lead to missed opportunities.

“Sir, permission to speak freely?” he asked his interrogator.

“Granted.”

“I’d like to request at least a temporary position that will allow me to help in the capture of the Rebels we’re chasing.”

“You don’t want a chance to recover a bit first?” the man asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“I can rest when we have them.  Those Rebels killed the Director and nearly got me killed as well.  I want to do what I can to help.”

After one last lengthy examining stare the officer finally relented.  “Very well.  Report to Lieutenant Commander Ansen on the bridge.  I’ll let him know you’re coming.”

Cassian clicked his heels together and executed a textbook salute, despite the lingering pain in his shoulder.  “Thank you, sir.”

Cassian, now more firmly settled into his role after several hours as Willix, did as he was told and began making his way to the bridge.  It was only two decks above his current location, but more aft, so he had to traverse a good portion of the lower command deck before he found the turbolift.  During his trek Cassian kept hearing a series of clicks spaced about a minute and a half apart.  The sound was faint, but he couldn’t actually place it as a part of the regular soundscape of a Star Destroyer.  It finally donned on him that it was his comlink, which was still tuned to frequencies used by the Alliance.  That meant it had to be Jyn.  At least he now knew she was alive and probably free if she was risking the comlink.  He wasn’t entirely sure where she had picked up the comlink, but she seemed to have the good sense not to comm him directly.  Cassian waited until he was alone in the lift to answer her.

“Yes, what is it?” he asked in a low voice.

“Nice to hear you’re still alive too, thanks for asking,” Jyn said with far too much cynicism in her voice for his liking.

“I don’t have long, what is it?”

“Word around the ship is we’re chasing the blockade runner, which seems bad for us.”

He sighed.  “I know.  I’m headed to the bridge to see what else I can find out.”

“But shouldn’t we do something?” Jyn asked.  “Sabotage the ship somehow?”

Cassian shook his head even though she couldn’t see him.  “We can’t.  Not with just the two of us.  It would take a simultaneous attack from at least ten people stationed across the ship to even slow it down.  There’s nothing we can do at the moment.”

There was a pause from the other end.  “What if I messed with the computers?  You know, throw a spanner into the navi-computer?  Hell, I could throw an actual spanner into the engines.  I know I passed the engineering department somewhere a few decks down.”

Cassian would have given half a smile in response to her oddly placed optimism if the situation weren’t so dire.  “One hydrospanner isn’t going to do much damage.  There are failsafes to keep the ship running even with the loss of power from up to two engines.  Resetting the navi-computer, however,” Cassian paused as he considered the possibility.  “Could you even do that from where you are?”

“Well, no.” He could hear the grimace in her voice.  “It would work best from the bridge where I would have full access to the system.  I’m kind of limited where I am.”

“Absolutely not!” he growled into the comlink.

“Oh, so you can traipse around with the command crew, but I can’t?”

“I have experience!” he hissed.

“And I’m a fast learner!”

Cassian clenched his fist at his side with the effort of not shouting at her.

“Alright, alright.  Calm down and stop making that face or someone will know that something’s up.”

He frowned at his comlink.  “What are you talking about?”

“Did you really think there weren’t any surveillance cams in that lift?  The entire ship is riddled with them.”

Cassian carefully observed the lift car around him, but he couldn’t spot anything obvious and just sighed instead.

“Please, just keep out of trouble.”

“But we have to do something!” she said adamantly.

“Just by surviving we are doing something.  Remember what Kay said.”

She went quiet at that.  Cassian could picture Jyn closing her eyes and breathing deeply, just as he was, thinking about Kay’s insistence that they were the backup, a last chance for the Alliance.

“Fine, but we need a way off this ship.  Soon.”

“I’m working on it,” he told her then keyed off and quickly stowed his comlink as the door slid open on a gleaming hallway.  He made his way through the last standardized corridors and onto the main bridge of the Destroyer.  Cassian looked down on the busy analysts and technicians in the command pit that occupied much of the central parts of the room on either side of the center walkway and the raised decks on the room’s perimeter near the viewports.  Huge panes of transparisteel shaped like trapezoids in alternating directions gave a 270 degree view of surrounding space.  Right now the normal star studded black of standard space travel was replaced with the bright stretch of stars as seen at lightspeed.  There was a certain frantic energy that always existed on a Destroyer’s bridge as a result of countless blinking indicator lights and the constant motion of the crewmen adjusting dials, flipping switches, and checking readout displays.  Even when on a regular sector patrol with no threats in range, the bridge still buzzed like an angry hive.

Cassian tried to locate the rank insignia of a lieutenant commander among all the activity and only received a few curious stares as he stood motionless to make his careful study.  He finally spotted the man standing at one of the forward control stations looking over another officer’s shoulder.  Cassian marched up the center command walkway and came to a stop at a respectful distance from the lieutenant commander, but still within his field of vision.

“Lieutenant Commander Ansen, sir?”

“Yes?” Ansen said with hesitation.  He narrowed his eyes at the rank plaque on the left side of Cassian’s chest.  “Captain?” he inquired while still leaving the question open ended.

“Willix, sir.  I was sent to assist you in any way I can.”

“Ah yes, Command did say something about you.  You’re the one we picked up above Scarif, yes?”

“That’s correct.”

Ansen hummed in consideration.  “You look perfectly fit to pass inspection to me.”

“I should hope so, sir,” Cassian said, not quite able to hold all of the surprise he felt out of his voice.  Clearly someone high up still didn’t quite believe Cassian’s and Jyn’s story and various personnel were being told to keep an eye on him.  If there was that much suspicion it was a wonder he was allowed on the bridge at all.  He was fairly certain Draven or Rieekan would have locked Cassian and Jyn up regardless of their story or proof of identity, just to be on the safe side.  Of course, the Rebellion was more circumspect by nature and would never assume their ranks couldn’t be infiltrated on a flagship of the fleet.

“In any case, I’m glad you’re here,” Ansen continued jovially.  “Sorin is seeing to the post-Scarif reports and we, ah,” the lieutenant commander paused and his gaze shifted uneasily, “We lost Cupetz earlier this week, so we are desperately in need of additional navigational analysis at the moment.”

There was a story there, Cassian could tell, but he also had a feeling that asking what had happened to Cupetz would not be wise.  “I’m happy to help, sir,” he said instead.

“Excellent!” Ansen beamed and held a datapad out to Cassian.  “You and Bagroff finish up here and I’ll go look into another matter.  I want an update in fifteen minutes on most likely destination based on vector tracking and distance already covered.”

“Yes sir!” Cassian said, standing at attention in a sort of half salute.

As Ansen walked away, the young officer Cassian was left with, a lieutenant by his pips, flicked an appraising gaze over Cassian’s parade ground stance, then gave him a look that said he was not impressed by either Cassian or the general situation.  The Rebel spy lifted an eyebrow of his own in response, then decided to risk a question of the lower ranking man.

“Do I want to know what happened to Cupetz?”

The young man’s gaze slipped back to his data screen and his mouth got thin.  “You most assuredly do not,” he informed Cassian.

Touchy subject.  How interesting.

The two got to work.  Cassian took updated data from the lieutenant and ran it through several different statistical analyses to determine the most likely destination for the ship the Destroyer was chasing.  He felt a bit odd since this was usually a job handled largely by the com-scan system, but he did as he was told without complaint.  The only good thing he noticed was that Captain Antilles didn’t appear to be taking the _Tantive IV_ back to base in the Yavin System.  Rather, they appeared to be staying a course for the Outer Rim.  Other than that, Cassian had no solid guess of where his compatriot Rebels were headed.

At least another hour passed in this fashion, with Cassian and Bagroff diligently plugging away at the numbers and keeping Lieutenant Commander Ansen informed of their progress.  Cassian’s brain was trying to figure out if there was anything he could do with the data or if it helped him find a way off the ship.  He was becoming more and more certain that his and Jyn’s escape would depend on whatever happened when they caught up with the _Tantive IV_ , because they _were_ catching up.

The quiet hum of the bridge was suddenly shattered by a shout from an analyst in the pit.  “Sir!  They’ve dropped out of hyperspace!”

The ship’s Captain, a man whose name Cassian didn’t actually know yet, turned sharply in his forward observation post.  “Where are they?” he demanded.

Cassian had already looked at the data on Bagroff’s screen and run a quick calculation.  “Over Tatooine, sir,” he replied into the hush on the bridge.  He couldn’t imagine what Antilles was doing out here above a small backwater planet of no real value.

“Prepare to revert to realspace, and someone inform Lord Vader,” the Captain snapped.

“No need, Captain,” came a chillingly deep voice accompanied by the menacing sound of even, electronically enhanced breaths.  “What’s the situation?” Darth Vader asked as he strode onto the bridge and joined the captain at the viewport.

Only years of practice and the thought of the terrible retribution should he be caught, kept Cassian from showing his sudden terror.  Just the mere presence of Vader’s dark silhouette and billowing cape was enough to draw all the air out of the bridge.  Cassian’s heartrate kicked up and his breathing came out shaky and uneven.  He did his best not to stare, but every instinct he had told him not to turn his back on the looming threat.

Cassian managed to tear his gaze away from the ominous figure and saw, to his slight relief, that he was not the only one feeling nervous about Vader’s presence.  The crewmen in the data pits were either wide eyed or staring very determinedly at their consoles.  Even Bagroff had gone rigid beside him.  Cassian risked a glance at the lieutenant and saw the man’s eyes were focused with laser-like intensity on the cloaked Vader, his mouth twisted into an expression of dislike.  Overall, the reaction puzzled Cassian.  He figured the crew serving on Vader’s own ship would have gotten used to his presence by now, but clearly this was not the case.  The sound of Vader’s electronic breathing was certainly disturbing, there was no doubt about that, but nothing would ever get done if the entire bridge crew stopped like this every time he walked onto the command deck.  The ship’s captain surely wouldn’t stand for it.

Still, Cassian was oddly grateful for the general unease that had settled on the bridge.  It would help to mask his own fear.  There were rumors that Vader had powers like a Jedi.  Cassian didn’t know if that was true or how much of that supposed power involved reading minds or emotions, but it was hard to believe that someone who looked more like a droid than a man could even feel the Force in any sort of meaningful way.  Vader was the opposite of Chirrut in almost every manner, and while the warrior monk had claimed not to be a Jedi, he had clearly possessed gifts beyond that of normal beings.  It seemed wrong that this creature that inspired such terror could have something in common with the erstwhile Guardian, but Cassian wasn’t willing to discount the possibility at the moment.  He focused on drawing his fear in tight around him and packing it away so that he wouldn’t be picked out of the crowd.

The rush of blood in his ears subsided and Cassian caught the tail end of the Captian’s explanation of the current situation.  “We’re not sure why they chose Tatooine, my Lord.  There’s not much there; just a vast desert.  Any interests are controlled by a Hutt crime lord —”

“I am familiar with the planet, Captain, it doesn’t concern me.  I want those Rebels,” Vader said, cutting off the Captain’s explanation.

“Yes, sir.  They won’t escape us.”

On the other side of the bridge the head navigation officer called out a warning from his post.  “Cutting in the sublight drives in ten seconds, sir.”

“Raise the forward shields!” the Captain commanded.

“Sublights in three, two, one.”

The reality of space solidified around them with a suddenness that was somehow more surprising than usual in the Star Destroyer.  They were in a system with a binary star serving as the twin suns for the arid, sand-filled planet below them.  Through the forward viewport Cassian could see the _Tantive IV_ already firing its aft cannons and sprinting in a futile effort to stay ahead of the _Devastator._   Star Destroyers may be slow to get going and they might lumber through maneuvers like a clumsy bantha, but once the capital ships got up to speed they could really _move_.  Cassian knew the Rebel blockade runner didn’t stand a chance.  Maybe Jyn had been right and they should have tried to intervene despite the deadly consequences.  What were two lives compared to all those under Captain Antilles’ command?

Vader spoke again with authority.  “Disable the ship, but don’t destroy it yet.  I need to find out what they know.”  He turned to the Captain.  “Prepare a boarding party, I will deal with these Rebels myself.”  Several pairs of eyes followed the menacing figure as he began to make his way off the bridge.

The Captain wasted no time in making a move on the Rebel ship.  It was with increasing difficulty that Cassian listened to the order for the turbolaser batteries to be brought to bear on the _Tantive IV_ ’s main reactor and its hyperdrive generator.

“Captain, they’ve begun to jettison the escape pods!”  Came a shout from somewhere on Cassian’s left.

In the very cusp of the bridge’s doorway Darth Vader stopped and slowly turned.  Cassian felt his breath stop as the second most powerful man in the galaxy seemed to pause in his rotation to stare at the Rebel spy.  Cassian felt trapped, like a hunted animal frozen in the gaze of a predator.  Had his thoughts and his rapid heartbeat given him away after all?  He was suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of the labored, artificial breathing coming from the dark mask.  But then, after what felt like an eternity, Vader’s body kept turning until he faced the Captain.

“Destroy the pods,” he commanded and swept out into the rest of the ship.

Cassian let out the breath he’d been holding and very briefly closed his eyes in recognition that Captain Antilles would probably go down with his ship, a fact Vader was clearly counting on in order to gather the information he wanted, which meant that anyone trying to escape with the Death Star plans in one of the pods wouldn’t make it very far.  Through it all, Cassian stayed at his post and continued to keep his ears open as the situation progressed.  He watched with growing dread as the now idly floating _Tantive IV_ was caught in the Destroyer’s tractor beam and hauled in.  He had no illusions that much of the crew or any other passengers, should there be any, would remain alive for too much longer.  The communications officers were practically frantic keeping up with the reports of skirmishes and then surrenders coming in from the Rebel ship.  He witnessed at least three more pods get obliterated before they could reach Tatooine’s atmosphere.  There was one pod though that seemed to escape the Imperial gunners’ notice.  Cassian chose to look at that as a good sign.

At one point a black uniformed commander walked briskly onto the bridge and spoke to the Captain.  The Captain gave a few firm nods and a dismissive gesture, then suddenly the officious looking commander was coming right for Cassian.

Cassian took a deep breath and reminded himself that staying alive was more important than ever now that everyone aboard the _Tantive IV_ was either dead or captured.

“Willix, is it?” the stern faced man inquired.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve been ordered by Lord Vader to send a detachment down to the planet to see what was in the escape pod that made it planetside.  The Captain says you’re not even supposed to be on this ship yet you’re eager to help.”  Cassian affirmed this with a nod, but didn’t dare interrupt.  “Good, I’m sending you and Lieutenant Prinna down with the troopers to help assess the situation.  See to it that the transport shuttle is ready to depart within the next ten minutes.”

Cassian held himself at attention while he answered.  “Yes, sir.  I’ll see to it immediately.”  He handed his datapad over to Bagroff and hurried off the bridge under the commander’s watchful gaze.  He walked quickly down the corridor toward the turbolifts, thinking fast.  Cassian had more or less been handed a way off the ship on a silver platter.  All he had to do now was find Jyn and make sure she also made it down to Tatooine somehow and he had to do it fast.

 

***

 

Jyn had found herself somewhat at a loss after her dismissal from the hangar bay.  Her heart was beating too fast and her legs felt a bit unsteady from the adrenaline still pumping through her veins from the near capture, but she had made a good enough showing of walking purposefully off in the indicated direction to not look too suspicious.  Of course, that’s when she was suddenly faced with the dilemma of having absolutely no clue where to find Flight Control on this monster of a ship.  She couldn’t look back for a cue from Cassian since that would have been too much of a giveaway.  She figured cadets learned the layout of the Empire’s signature capital ships in their academies, but Jyn had never pictured herself on a Star Destroyer in a situation that didn’t feature her as a prisoner being brutally tortured.  Yet being free to wander loose in enemy territory was terrifying in its own way.

She had eventually hit the far wall of the hangar where she saw a few control stations and some large viewscreens that kept updating information in rows and columns of numbers that meant nothing to her, and a couple of turbolifts.  Definitely no flight officer.  She had a moment of hesitation in front of the lift and debated the merits of staying in relatively known ground in the hangar versus wandering deeper into the ship where one false move might reveal her decidedly non-Imperial background.  Somehow, Jyn knew that Cassian would want her to play her role and follow her “orders” so she got on the lift and chose a deck at random to exit on – not all the way at the top where the bridge was, but somewhere in the middle that might still have large viewports to watch for incoming and outgoing ships.

Jyn did manage to find Flight Control after wandering through a few areas of the ship that probably didn’t see pilots all that often judging by the occasional curious glance and cocked head.  The flight office was surprisingly still compared to the bustle of the rest of the ship, but that made sense given the ship was travelling through hyperspace at the moment and not coordinating fleet maneuvers.  It turned out that not even the chief officer was in since she was looking into matters elsewhere and Jyn was told she could either wait or come back in an hour.  It all seemed very unofficial, and frankly, un-Imperial to Jyn and she decided if they couldn’t be bothered with her, then she wouldn’t bother with them.  Besides what she had really wanted was to find a ‘fresher with a shower, consume a decent meal, and to find an unsupervised computer terminal that she could mess around on until she had a better handle on the situation.  Cassian hadn’t given her any sort of contingency plan in case they were separated, but Jyn figured any damage she could do without getting caught would be helpful. 

But first, food.  She had been going full tilt since she had been plucked out of the prison camp by the Alliance and it was starting to catch up with her.  Not even the adrenaline rush of being so entrenched behind enemy lines could keep her going for much longer.

Decision made, Jyn had taken to wandering through the ship in search of anything that struck her fancy.  She noted the location of engineering, the troop barracks – where she debated the idea of the sonic shower, but ultimately decided against voluntarily putting herself in a compromising situation – the mess – which was surprisingly disappointing.  Apparently the Empire didn’t believe in real food – and what was evidently a recreation deck.  She did manage to secure herself a ration pack , which was better than nothing, but mostly just reminded her of the weeks that Saw’s cadre stayed alive thanks to similar stolen Imperial rations.  In her search for an empty computer terminal Jyn decided to make her way up to the comms tower.  If she was after information that was as good a place as any to get it.

She had barely made it a few steps off the lift on the deck where the signals corps did most of their work when Jyn was finally caught.

“Hey, you there!  Pilot!” someone called.

Jyn cringed and turned, her right hand automatically reaching for a blaster that wasn’t present.

“What are you doing up here?” a somewhat familiar looking man in a green lieutenant’s uniform asked, still harshly, but with a tinge of curiosity.

“Oh! I was just wondering,” Jyn began, thinking furiously for a good excuse to be somewhere she clearly wasn’t supposed to be, “If you had managed to figure out what those Rebels were transmitting from Krennic’s shuttle.  They nearly killed me over it, so…” she trailed off suggestively and shrugged.

The liueutenant watched her for a few seconds more through narrowed eyes, then his expression cleared.  “You’re the one who came in with Willix, right?  In the pod?”

Jyn nodded.

“Did he ask you to come find out what we knew?  It wouldn’t surprise me.”  Jyn made a face that she hoped indicated he had caught on to her motives.  “Willix always did have his eyes on everything going on aboard the ship.  I never understood how he slept at night.”

 _Probably not very well_ Jyn caught herself thinking, then she realized who this man had to be.  It was the signals officer who had recognized Cassian down in the hangar.

“He’s just trying to cover all his bases, I think, sir,” Jyn explained.

“Typical,” Vilmar said with a fond smile.  “You can tell him that we don’t know, and have no way of knowing for sure.  All we know is that Lord Vader keeps referring to ‘plans’ of some sort.  All other information on the matter is need-to-know.”

“Of course.”  Jyn stuck out her hand.  “Thanks for helping us out down there.  You probably saved us from several hours in a detention cell.”

Vilmar raised an eyebrow and reached for Jyn’s hand.  “I was just surprised to see him, that’s all.”

“Still, we owe you,” Jyn said and used the moment of dialogue to distract him while she relieved him of his comlink.  She wanted to make sure she could contact Cassian if she had to.  Jyn hid the comm up her sleeve as she turned back to the lift.  Vilmar may not blow the whistle on her, but he wasn’t about to just let her wander through his designated area of the ship.

Since happening upon a conveniently unoccupied data terminal in a secluded corner of the ship was proving unlikely, Jyn settled on another tack.  All shipboard computer systems usually connected back to a central location where HoloNet access could be monitored, updates to entire systems could be made, and hardware glitches rooted out.  Chances were there would be a monitor down there as well, usually just used for diagnostics.

Not for nothing was Jyn a top notch slicer though.  If she played her cards right, maybe changed a few of the connections, she could access enough of the whole shipwide system to bring up security feeds, internal communications, maybe even some navigational information if she was lucky.  At the very least, Jyn could find herself a kriffing map.

Her best guess put that main computer service room somewhere near engineering so that all the engineers and techs could be kept in the same area of the ship and not sully the gleaming corridors of the upper decks which were frequented by the officers.

The lower decks were mostly populated by scurrying technicians in gray or black uniforms much like hers, with black caps or the occasional ridiculously oversized helmet.  Jyn snagged a cap that was hanging haphazardly from a lever above a worker’s head that was half in a compartment full of tangled wires.  She tucked her hair more firmly behind her ears, shoved the hat on her head, and quickened her pace a bit to better blend in.

It was almost embarrassingly easy to find what she was looking for – a dark room full of quietly humming machinery and wires.  Of course, she’d had to circumvent the locks on not only this door, but the several she first tried by tailing a haggard looking technician with a tool box until she picked up his code from watching him go in and out of doors.  Jyn was banking on the fact that this Destroyer, like most other Imperial bases, didn’t have specific codes for each door, but rather the personnel had individual numbers that got them past various security points.  It was easier to teach a computer to recognize hundreds of ID numbers than it was to teach a human to remember hundreds of security codes.  It took another half an hour of work to set herself up with everything she needed.  There were a few tricky moments when she realized she didn’t have a proper pair of wire cutters, but she dug around in the many pockets of her pilot’s uniform until she found some sort of metallic instrument that she didn’t recognize and repurposed it into a makeshift knife.

Jyn rooted around in Imperial security protocols, wishing she still had on hand some of the datacards with programs she’d written years ago for this very purpose, but she made do without.  She plucked at digital threads here and there until all but the highest levels of shipboard security unraveled at her fingertips.  Jyn grinned at her screen and went hunting for information.

She found detailed blueprints of the ship stored among hundreds of technical drawings of the various craft berthed on the _Devastator_ and compared them with the careful layout of the audio-visual surveillance feeds, sector by sector.  Jyn listened in on brief snippets of conversations, but she was really just trying to pinpoint Cassian’s location in the controlled chaos of the ship.  What she did hear made her frown as she slowly put together enough of the puzzle to realize that the _Devastator_ was chasing Captain Antilles and, more importantly, the Death Star plans.  There wasn’t much she could do about the situation so she applied herself to her search for Cassian with increased vigor.

She finally found Cassian in what her map labelled “Conference Room 3” in the midst of Central Command.  From what she could see of him, he appeared to be alright.  He wasn’t being restrained in anyway and seemed to be having a rather pleasant chat with a roomful of Imps.  Jyn probably would have lashed out or at least horribly befuddled her cover story under such close scrutiny, but Cassian was as calm and collected as ever.  One of the interrogating officers, however, had a surly expression on his face and was probably more annoyed by the interruption to his regular routine than anything else. 

Jyn kept one eye on Cassian while she kept searching for something useful.  She couldn’t find much in the way of current navigational data, but she did confirm that they were still somewhere in the Outer Rim, which was pretty much equivalent to saying they were still in the galaxy for all the good it did her.  She did take the time to set up a subroutine that would erase her, or rather Kaia Solamar’s, recorded presence on the ship.  If she was never officially onboard then they wouldn’t look for her so carefully when she managed to escape the Star Destroyer.  She would have done the same for Cassian, but his Willix identity was already too deeply entrenched in the system.  About all she could do was make his promotion seem a little more official so that he wouldn’t look quite as suspicious to whomever was checking up on him.

When Cassian was finally released from his debrief and started to make his way through the ship on his own, Jyn decided it was time for them to finally coordinate their efforts.  She fiddled with the comlink she had stolen from Vilmar until she was reasonably certain she was on a Rebel frequency and started to methodically signal Cassian until he answered her.  It was odd to look at him on a screen but hear his sharp Coruscanti accented Basic coming through her comlink.  Despite his undercover work during their infiltration on Scarif, Jyn had grown accustomed to his melodic native accent and rolling Rs.  He somehow made her name sound softer when he spoke it and less like a sharp blade that cut anyone who said it.  She didn’t like hearing him sound like an Imperial any more than she liked seeing him dressed as one.

After a couple minutes of signaling him, he finally deigned to answer her.

“Yes, what is it?” he asked tersely.

Jyn scowled at the tone of his voice.  “Nice to hear you’re still alive too, thanks for asking,” Jyn said just to spite him. 

Cassian was equal parts bafflingly caring and maddeningly efficient and she couldn’t quite tell which he would be until he opened his mouth.  She managed to keep on topic and ask him about the possibility of doing anything to slow down the pursuit of the Rebel blockade runner and if there was any plan for getting off the Destroyer as of yet.  Part of her, though, was caught in a vivid memory of his calloused hand firm against her neck and his mouth warm and desperate against hers.  There had been so much emotion in the way he had kissed her in the pod that she hadn’t known immediately how to react.  Even now, it was hard to reconcile everything she’d felt from him with the indifferent, Imperial exterior Cassian was currently presenting to the galaxy.

It made her confused.

She watched Cassian struggle with his anger at her insistence that she could do more than hide in the computer maintenance closet, but soon she relented.  There was only so much stress even Cassian could take and he had to be as exhausted and emotionally drained as she was.  His reminder of Kay-Tu’s words about them having to stay alive was proof enough that his usual detachment from the world around him was failing him.

Maybe that was why he had kissed her.  Maybe there had been some strange combination of exhaustion, relief at being alive, and gratitude for her words.  Jyn couldn’t think of another logical explanation.  There were illogical ones that involved the way her stomach had fluttered when he had watched her as she had helped him with his uniform back on Scarif or that small smile he had just for her back in the hangar on Yavin IV.  She didn’t really consider the illogical explanations since everything she knew of the Intelligence officer said he thought everything through from every angle before he moved.

Jyn shook her head in an attempt to clear it then bit down on her lip to stop the phantom tingling that Cassian had left there with a kiss.

As a rule, Jyn didn’t do close interpersonal relationships.  Not anymore.  And especially not romantic ones.  Back when she was a teenager, before Saw had abandoned her, a boy called Codo had tried to kiss her.  Jyn had rebuffed him with a swift punch to the gut since she had still been mad at him for one reason or another, and that had been that.  Once she was on her own, surviving took precedence and more often than not that meant not letting anyone get close enough to know her.  Besides, being betrayed and abandoned by everyone who had ever mattered to her didn’t exactly make her want to go out and find someone else who would inevitably let her down.

She stared at Cassian on her monitor as he breathed with his eyes closed for a moment and realized that he had already begun to matter to her in ways no one else had in years.  His strange importance to her came from small things: his quiet, yet constant presence in her life, the way he took cues from her without extensive conversation, his competent handling of so many volatile situations.  But most of all, it was the way he kept coming back for her and the way he said he trusted her, against all odds.  She knew that his trust, like her own, was not given lightly.  She instinctively felt that Cassian trusting her, and her decision to trust him spoke far more about what lay between them than any kiss could.

Whatever their mutual feelings may be, they would have to wait.  Jyn wrenched her thoughts back around to her conversation with Cassian and his reminder that they had to stay alive.  Staying alive meant no distractions

“Fine,” she said after too long a pause, “but we need a way off this ship.  Soon.”

“I’m working on it,” Cassian growled with determination and clicked off.  Jyn watched him exit the lift and quickly disappear from all security cams as he stepped onto the bridge.

After that, Jyn debated whether to stay where she was and keep watch or if there was something more useful she could have been doing.  She was gathering a decent amount of intel down here and didn’t really know what else she could feasibly do.  Perhaps she could have gone back to the hangar to try to blend in with the other pilots, but they hadn’t exactly been sitting around in groups idly repairing their ships and trading gossip.  The Empire was much too strict and efficient for such informality.  Happily chatting pilots were more likely to be found among the Alliance’s ranks, if her brief jaunt on Yavin IV was any indication.  Besides, she had already erased the message from Command that would have alerted Flight Control to the suspicious fact that Kaia Solamar had not, in reality, reported in for a full debrief.  If she showed up now, existing in person, but not in the system, things could get tricky.  Admittedly, she had been in this one location for quite some time now and no one had noticed her or the effects of her work yet, but wasn’t that precisely when everything always went wrong?

After a brief internal debate, Jyn stayed put and passed a rather boring hour keeping one eye on who was coming and going from the bridge and the other trying to worm her way into the navi-computer.  For some reason, navigation was on its own dedicated network and it wasn’t really connected to the system she had already sliced into.  Either the ship’s designers were concerned about computing power and not wanting anything to interrupt with ship or fleet movements through space, or the Empire really didn’t want most of its people to know where they were at any given time.  Jyn supposed it was a way to further isolate those in the Imperial service.  Keep them focused on shipboard matters and feed them the appropriate propaganda and it became much harder for anyone to defect or desert.  If the majority of the members of the Imperial Navy never had a decent, firsthand view of the stranglehold the Empire had on the galaxy and its citizens, then how could they ever begin to resist?

Jyn almost frowned at herself at that thought.  Cassian and the other Rebels must have affected her more than she thought.  It was not so long ago that Jyn herself did all she could to not look up and see what she was, or rather _wasn’t_ , doing with her life in the midst of Imperial oppression.  Her attitude had helped her survive, yes, but ultimately it had helped Palpatine to tighten his grip on everything.

She scowled and redoubled her efforts on the navi-computer only to look up a couple of minutes later to see her cam feed dominated by the swirling darkness of Darth Vader before he disappeared onto the bridge.  Jyn unconsciously stopped what she was doing and grasped at the console to steady herself.  Her knuckles were white with the ferocity of her grip, and her eyes felt huge in the semi-darkness.

Jyn said a silent prayer to the Force, an act which she would deny ever having done, and hoped that Cassian would be alright.  If Vader found him out, then there was no way Jyn was getting off this ship alive.

The ship shuddered slightly under her and Jyn twitched with nerves.  It took her a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t the shudder of catastrophe, more like the inertial compensators not being able to quite keep up with the sudden drop out of hyperspace.  Not long after that Jyn heard a thundering from somewhere not far below her and guessed that the turbolaser batteries had opened fire on something.  She cursed and hurried to bring up the data from the external sensor array, including the visual scanners. 

The screen in front of her showed the _Tantive IV_ barely a kilometer away and losing ground fast as the Star Destroyer let loose with its cannons.  The few shots that the Rebels fired back at the _Devastator_ did almost no damage and Jyn watched in horror as the Rebel ship was disabled and the tractor beam hauled in the corvette.

What was clearly meant to be a boarding party – at least five squads of stormtroopers, a handful of officers, and the towering figure of Vader himself – moved like a battering ram through the hangars of the Destroyer and then onto the Rebel ship itself to wreak havoc. 

Only then did a little box in the corner of her screen start blinking.  She had almost forgotten about the program she had set in motion to work on getting a toehold on the navigational data.  She looked down at the coordinates her program presented her with and felt her stomach clench in fear, or maybe disbelief.  She switched back to the external feeds and zoomed out so that she could get a look at the surface of the planet.

“Oh no,” she muttered to herself as she took in the uninterrupted, vast stretches of brown wasteland.  “No.  Anywhere but here.  Please.”  Jyn didn’t know who she was pleading with, and some part of her knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers, yet there seemed to be no use in denying that the universe itself was out to get her right now.

Which, of course, was when Cassian reappeared on the surveillance cams just outside the bridge.  He had apparently survived his encounter with Darth Vader, which was a definite plus, but now he looked straight up into one of the cams and brought his comlink up to his mouth.

He knew she was watching.

“How far are you from the main hangar?” he asked with a very serious expression before hurrying off through the corridors again.

“No.  Not here.  Not Tatooine,” she told him with as much steel in her voice as she could manage.

“We may not get another chance!” Cassian said in a low whisper.  “Vader requested his shuttle so that he could personally escort a prisoner back to the Death Star.”

“Who?”  No disrespect to Captain Antilles, but Jyn didn’t think he warranted that kind of treatment, custodian of the Death Star plans or not.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t bode well for us, so we need to get off this ship.”

He was right.  Of course he was right.  Their Imperial charade could only last so long, she just wished her escape didn’t depend on the one planet in the entire galaxy she had vowed never to return to.  She really didn’t have a death wish no matter what anyone else thought.

“Fine, where do you need me?” she asked and began to extricate herself from the maintenance room.

“There should be a hallway just off the main hangar adjacent to the amidships turbolifts.  Meet me there in five minutes.”

“What!” Jyn exclaimed, but Cassian didn’t respond.  She was just lucky she had found herself a map and studied it enough to have an idea of which arbitrary fifth-back hallway Cassian was talking about.  Still, she was several decks down and significantly further aft than the main hangar and all her earlier wandering had taught her that it took time to get anywhere on this massive ship.

Jyn picked up her pace and hoped that no one noticed one lowly pilot among the throng.

When she had navigated her way through the maze of sharp angled, black and gray hallways, Jyn found Cassian pacing the length of the specified hallway.

“You’re late,” he practically growled once he caught sight of her.

Jyn crossed her arms over her chest and glared.

Cassian finally halted in his tracks and managed to tell her the plan.  “I’m leading a detachment down to the planet to search for the pod,” he explained, retaining his Coruscanti tinged accent even though they were alone in the corridor.  He paused and looked at her expectantly.

Jyn’s first response was to think _good for you, have fun on that wretched planet.  I’ll take my chances with the Empire_ , but she swallowed down her sarcastic commentary and went for practical instead.

“You want me to stow away on the transport, don’t you?”

He handed over a datapad he was carrying and said, “You can claim to be doing preflight checks and get yourself onboard.”

Jyn tried not to let her rising panic at the thought of being captured by Jabba’s henchmen once planetside cloud her judgment.  It was a losing battle.  “Won’t the actual pilot be suspicious of someone else doing their job?” she asked in desperation.

Cassian shrugged.  “An extra person helps expedite the process.  We have to be underway in the next three minutes and you need to be safely hidden before the troopers get onboard.”

“This is a bad idea,” she told him and swiped the datapad from his hand while still managing to scowl.  Jyn fell in beside him as he made his way out into the main hangar, now bustling with activity.  “For the record,” she muttered at him, “if I end up captured by a grubby gangster, I’m blaming you.  Secondly, I don’t know how you plan on sneaking away from an entire patrol without being noticed, _Captain Willix._ ”  She put extra emphasis on his fake identity to remind him that his Imperial persona wasn’t so easily dismissed.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” he mumbled back before snatching the cap off her head and tossing it aside.  Then he raised his voice to a more regular volume.  “I want this ship ready to launch in the next two and a half minutes.  Carry on, Solamar.”

Jyn gave him a scathing look then marched into the open and straight toward the ship that was clearly built to ferry around military personnel.  She made a show of circling the ship once and entering something onto the datapad in her hands before climbing on board.  Inside it was all hard angles and utility, not an iota of comfort was to be found.  Hard benches featuring a rudimentary safety restraint system that seated four people to a side separated by a central aisle took up most of the ship’s interior space.  The cramped cockpit was already occupied by a thin man with light colored hair and watery eyes who stared at her like she was a mynock leaving slimy marks on his ship’s main viewport.  She waved her datapad defensively and gestured toward the rear of the ship.  “Willix told me to help out.  I’ll just check the compressor line and the shield generator then be off.”

 Jyn did actually check the compressor line once she found it since she could feel the pilot’s watery eyes boring holes in the back of her head as she moved through the ship.  Once she started through the sequence of diagnostic checks on the shield generator she finally risked a glance toward the cockpit and saw that the man’s attention was back on his own console.  This was probably the only chance she would get to stash herself somewhere onboard.  The distinct sound of several stormtroopers marching in unison was growing steadily louder and sneaking its way to her hears from the region of the open boarding ramp.  She gave the entire interior of the ship one last once over and decided that the only place she could feasibly hide herself was one of the storage compartments that normally held emergency rations and other equipment.  Jyn pulled open the compartment nearest to her, but it was too full of containers and an extra medkit to allow her to fit.  She turned and opened the compartment directly behind her to find it only partially occupied.  With a glance toward the cockpit to make sure the coast was clear, Jyn quickly shifted the few containers from one compartment to the other and crouched down to squeeze herself in just as the first troopers hit the boarding ramp.

Breathing deeply and keeping her eyes shut, Jyn focused on what she could hear outside of her compartment.  Being forced to hide in small dark spaces was pretty far down on her list of ideal activities.  In her experience, the situation never ended well, and quite frankly the dark cave she had hid in on Lah’mu when Krennic had come for her family still featured in her nightmares.  Even if everything went well now and she somehow managed to sneak away from the transport ship unnoticed, she would still be on Tatooine where a greedy Hutt had put a price on her head and far too many of the planet’s residents were only too happy to betray their best friends if it meant collecting on a bounty.  Only focusing on the sounds and the voices she could hear outside of the compartment kept Jyn from hyperventilating or losing herself entirely in some of her worst memories.  When she heard Cassian’s voice, twisted as it was into hard Imperial edges, commanding the pilot to launch as soon as they had clearance from Flight Control, she leaned her head back against the bulkhead behind her and let out a long breath.  Cassian was here with her.  She wasn’t alone.  He wouldn’t leave her behind.

She repeated those words like a mantra for the entire short journey down to the deserts of Tatooine.

What chatter she could make out from the rest of the ship suggested that they weren’t just landing the ship in the middle of nowhere, much to her relief.  There were only a couple of decent sized settlements on Tatooine so they would probably put down in one of the spaceports in Mos Eisley or Mos Espa and then head out on speeders or skiffs to wherever the pod had landed.  That gave her, and maybe Cassian if he was lucky, a better opportunity to sneak away, but it would still be risky.

When the ship began to decelerate in preparation for landing, Cassian began to bark out orders.  “Lieutenant, I want a precise location for that pod based on its transponder signal by the time we have the transports unloaded from the second shuttle.”

There was some kind of muffled interruption that Jyn couldn’t make out, but Cassian’s angry voice soon cleared everything up.  “What do you mean the second transport is still twenty minutes behind us?” he exclaimed.  He quickly cut off whatever reply he was given.  “So be it.  Commander, I want your unit to secure local transportation and head into the desert as soon as possible.  We do at least have a general direction to start with and you will be updated with more specific coordinates as soon as we have them.  At least one unit will stay in the city to monitor for unusual activity and the rest will disperse as needed to either the crash site or in pursuit of whoever was in the pod. I want regular reports. Understood?”

A chorus of “yes sirs” answered just as the ship touched down.  Jyn waited for another ten minutes after she heard the last of the troopers’ heavy boots leave the shuttle and all sounds of movement outside her compartment had ceased.  She pushed the compartment door open as silently as she could manage, knowing that the pilot was likely still on board completing the transport’s post-flight routine and looking after the ship.  She crawled out on hands and knees and crouched low behind one of the rows of benches.  There was no obvious movement from the cockpit so Jyn carefully made her way through the ship toward the boarding ramp, pausing only briefly to pick up a pack of supplies that had been left behind by a trooper.  The pack may have made her more conspicuous, but she had no intention of venturing out among the scum of Tatooine without any sort of supplies or equipment that she could possibly barter or use to simply survive.  

Near the ramp, Jyn paused behind a bulkhead that shielded her from view from the cockpit and allowed her to look out at the port immediately surrounding the ship.  There were no stormtroopers within twenty meters of the ship on this side at least.  She certainly couldn’t claim that Cassian wasn’t doing his part to help her out, but she still had no idea how he was going to effect his own escape.  Jyn carefully edged her way off the ship, running from the ramp to a fuel tanker nearby and hiding in its shadows.  From this vantage point, Jyn spied Cassian in quiet conversation with the shuttle pilot, the lieutenant, and a stormtrooper who had a strange orange pauldron over one shoulder.  Jyn didn’t know how to get Cassian’s attention to let him know that she was off the ship without all of them catching sight of her, so she resorted to the comlink once again.  It wasn’t safe to speak to him outright so another series of clicks would have to serve as confirmation of her planetside safety.  She watched him register the clicks then subtly click off his comlink even as his gaze seemed to lazily scan the hangar floor.  She stretched her neck as high as it would go over the tanker without being blatantly obvious.  Their eyes met for hardly a second across the busy space, a slight nod of his head the only affirmation Jyn had that she hadn’t imagined his recognition. 

She ducked lower again as the blonde haired pilot suddenly turned around and headed back to the ship, shaking his head in what looked like disgust judging by the extra pinched expression on his face.  Once he was safely out of sight Jyn risked another glance back at Cassian and saw him walking away from the lieutenant and the stormtrooper and toward one of the exits leading to the city proper.  There was no way Jyn was going to be able to catch up with him without being seen, but she wasn’t about to just cower in the shadows and wait for him to comm her with a rendezvous point.  Hell, it could take him hours to make a clean getaway from the Imperial operations on Tatooine, and she just didn’t feel like waiting that long.

At this point the whole Imperial get up was going to do her more harm than good, so she happily ripped the Imperial insignia off her sleeve and shoved it in a dark crevice on the tanker.  Then she unzipped her uniform jumpsuit to the waist and tied it around her hips so that it wouldn’t just fall down completely.  Her own half gloves came out of a pocket on her leg and slipped over her fingers like old, well-worn friends.  In just her own shirt and gloves, and devoid of anything that clearly marked her as part of the Empire, Jyn felt more like herself than she had since before the ragtag crew of _Rogue One_ had landed on Scarif.  If only she could get hold of a new blaster or a new set of truncheons she’d be set.  Lastly, she reminded herself that she had been sneaking in and out of spaceports since she was twelve and her situation right now was no different.

With a new determination, Jyn studied the hangar floor and mapped out her escape path.  She timed her movements so that a cart hauling crates and at least three people of various species blocked the first part of her efforts from almost everyone’s view.  She walked past a SoroSuub yacht that had clearly seen better days with a casual air that suggested someone who was leisurely making their way to their ship and doing a little browsing along the way.  Just beyond the next ship docked in the line Jyn took a sharp turn and latched onto the tail end of a large group making their way to the exit.  She stayed in their orbit until she was clear of the spaceport and under the blazing twin suns of Tatooine all on her own.  All she needed now was a cool place to lay low until she could figure out her next move.

Jyn walked among the dusty streets, past outdoor vendors and small scrap dealers, careful to keep her head down and her eyes away from anyone that might notice her.  Between the heat and the almost constant state of hyper alertness she’d been in for well over a standard day, Jyn was quickly acquiring an exhaustion headache.  It probably didn’t help that her last meal could hardly have been called a meal and had been severely lacking in water.  The pack she had grabbed contained some protein pellets, but no canteen.  Jyn wasn’t entirely sure a regular canteen of water was even standard issue in an Imperial stormtrooper field kit since they never took off their helmets.  She set the thought aside and considered the rest of her options.  As she had no credits on her and wasn’t even sure if any of her old accounts still had anything in them, she couldn’t exactly just waltz into a cantina and order a couple glasses of water to go with the spiced ale that sounded incredibly appealing at the moment.  She’d have to fall back on older habits and take what she needed where she could find it.

She kept wandering.  Sometimes she brushed by someone just a little closer than normal and occasionally she even bumped into someone who had a bag over their shoulder that she could quickly pilfer while she apologized profusely for her tired clumsiness.  It was a well-worn act that she hadn’t had to resort to in years, but even tired and a little worse for wear, Jyn could still pick out a mark from only a few second’s quick study.  After maybe an hour or so she managed to lift herself a couple of credit chits, somebody’s lunch container, a couple of canteens, only one of which contained actual water, and a small blaster that was clearly meant as a holdout.  The meager food rations didn’t matter as much now that she had some ready credits to spend, but who knew how she was going to get off this sandblasted planet so she preferred to save what earnings she had at this point.

It was sometime around sunset, with the binary suns swiftly disappearing over the horizon, that Jyn finally heard from Cassian.  It was nothing as direct as a comm message saying “meet me by the repair shop on the east edge of town.”  Oh no.  This was Cassian so everything had to be coded and complicated.  She supposed he knew what he was doing since he was clearly still alive after spending the day among the enemy, but she was tired of all the sneaking around.  The message he sent outlining the rendezvous coordinates was in a code that was made up purely of rhythmical comm clicks.  In all honesty, she was surprised he knew the code at all.  It was one she had used in her adolescent years among Saw Gerrera’s band of rebels, but maybe Saw had actually gotten it from the Rebellion before he broke off to wage his own war.  If it was a Rebellion code, it had to be incredibly outdated, but then she wouldn’t have recognized any of the newer ones.  Jyn sighed and silently admitted to the world at large that Cassian Andor was indeed intelligent and a very good spy.

Jyn made her way to the meet up spot with enough time for her to case the area for potential enemies before she just planted herself conspicuously on a street corner.  There was still a chance that it wasn’t Cassian sending the message at all and the old Rebellion code was just part of an elaborate ruse to capture her. 

Apparently Cassian’s paranoia had begun to rub off on her after just a few days and a few odd encounters years apart.  To be fair though, Jyn had employed a healthy sense of suspicion in her years on her own as well and she suspected it was one of the reasons she was still alive today.

The square where Cassian said he’d meet her was just behind a row of the larger shops and eating establishments that nevertheless shared the same low dome-roofed architecture as the rest of the small city.  On any other planet, a square like this would probably have had some greenery, maybe a fountain, but on Tatooine water was precious and not to be wasted on decorative plant life.  Instead there was just a mostly empty space bounded by buildings on four sides with a few alleyways leading off into the distance and a tunnel that allowed for pedestrians, small speeders, or swoops to move unimpeded below a building that looked like it was actually several apartments.  The important thing, though, was that it was mostly empty aside from the odd passerby who hurriedly traversed the square.  Even the rooftops were free of people and there wasn’t a glint of sunlight sparking off the barrel of a blaster rifle or a sniper’s scope to be seen.  That didn’t mean there couldn’t be several squads of troopers lying in wait inside the buildings ready to strike, but it really didn’t seem likely.

Still, it was safer to keep to the shadows, so Jyn waited for Cassian to show himself, or at least give her a signal before stepping into the open.  Another half an hour passed before Jyn heard more clicks coming through on her comm.  “Northside,” was all the message said.  Jyn thought for a moment and tried to get her bearings.  Her position on the southeast side of the square gave her a pretty decent view of the entire area and she hadn’t seen anyone come or go for the last ten minutes.  She knew that Cassian was crafty, but if it really was him, this was impressive.  Too impressive?  At some point one of them was going to have to make a move or they could be in this holding pattern until they both died of thirst. 

She sighed and decided to trust that Cassian was, in fact, Cassian.   “Southeast. Moving out,” she clicked back.

Feeling woefully under armed with just the small holdout blaster she had liberated earlier, Jyn cautiously moved along the edge of the square toward the northern border, sticking close to the buildings.  No one shot at her and no one came bursting out of the backdoors of various buildings so she was starting to feel a little better about the situation.  As she neared a recessed doorway that featured a few steps up and apparently a hidden downward staircase, Jyn heard Cassian’s low voice call out to her.

“Jyn! Jyn down here!”

Jyn dropped her gaze and her blaster arm down to the hidden stairs and there he was.  His black uniform tunic was gone and instead he wore just a plain white, long sleeved shirt paired with the dark trousers and tall boots of his Imperial disguise.  He was also keeping a blaster trained on her which meant he was not overly injured in any way.  They stared at each other, cataloguing potential damage and looking for any sign of threat.  Cassian nodded at her and after a moment she returned the nod.  They simultaneously lowered their weapons.

“Come on,” he beckoned to her.  “I’ve got a better way out.”

Jyn descended the stairs and passed by Cassian with just a squeeze of his arm to let him know how relieved she was to see him.  He led them through a small dark space and then into a system of tunnels that Jyn didn’t even know existed.  Cassian stayed quiet until they had put at least a kilometer of twisting darkness behind them.

“It looks like you’ve been busy,” he said, indicating the significantly fuller pack on her back and the blaster still gripped in her hand.  Jyn was silently relieved to hear Cassian sounding like himself again, his words fluid and imprecise.

“I had to do something.  I wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for you on this kriffing hot ball of sand and misery that has no business being inhabited, let alone frequented by a number of well-known criminals and smugglers,” Jyn explained, the heat in her voice rising as she expounded on her extreme dislike of Tatooine.  “I had to blend in without drawing the notice of both the Empire and other undesirables which meant staying on the move and being just one more criminal among the horde.”

Jyn would swear that Cassian snorted at her as he paused and checked around a bend before leading her to a door.  “Are you going to explain why you hate this planet so much?”

“Only if you explain why there are tunnels under the city and how you knew about them.”

Cassian looked like he was trying not to roll his eyes, but he answered her anyway.  “Luck mostly.  They’re probably here because this is a smuggler’s haven, not to mention its cooler underground so why not take advantage?

Jyn found that to be a very unsatisfactory answer, but he was probably right.  In the grand scheme of things it was unimportant so she answered his question with a grimace at the rather explosive memory.  “Jabba the Hutt put a price on my head after I, ah, damaged some of his property.”

That made Cassian look back at her with a concerned expression.  “That can’t be right.  We scoured the HoloNet and the underworld for information about you before you were located on Wobani.  Something like a bounty on your life would have come up.”

“Technically the bounty is for Tanith Pontha, who happens to look a lot like me.  Only blonder and with more stylish clothing.”

Cassian cursed low under his breath.  “It doesn’t change much.  You need to stay away from most public places anyway.  We’ll find somewhere to lay low while we try to find a way offworld.”  He climbed a newly revealed staircase that brought them to another hatch at street level.

She wasn’t about to argue with the need to stay out of sight.  With stormtroopers patrolling Mos Eisley, even Cassian wasn’t safe from being recognized.  “Hey,” she called up to him as a sudden thought struck her.  “How did you manage to get away from those Imperial troops?”

“I didn’t, not in the way you mean.  I couldn’t risk it yet.”

“What?” Jyn asked incredulously.

“The unit that went out to the crash site found footprints and other tracks leading away from the pod.  There’s been a lot of chatter about droids and I don’t want to risk not being informed of their latest discoveries.”

“What if they’re tracking you?”

He shook his head.  “They’re not.  I’m their commanding officer at the moment and they have no reason to suspect me.  As long as I check in regularly everything should be fine.”

“How are you going to pull off playing Imperial officer and help find a way offworld without them noticing?” Jyn grumbled as she stepped out into the fading sunlight.

“Very carefully,” he answered unhelpfully, but his eyes were trained back on the tunnel entrance, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth.

Jyn followed his gaze.  “What is it?”

“I thought I heard…” he trailed off, eyes narrowing at the dark tunnel opening.  “Come on, we should hurry.”

She did as requested without complaint, for once, and led the way back toward the center of town all while keeping a close eye on her surroundings.  There weren’t as many people out wandering the streets now that night had begun to fall.  Either this part of Mos Eisley was missing a significant nightlife, or the lack of a dense urban center and its accompanying brightly lit streets made the darkness on Tatooine somehow more enveloping and dangerous.

Without any clear destination in mind Jyn kept up a steady pace that spiraled them ever closer to the middle of the city where the main spaceport was.  Cassian was making her anxious with the way he kept glancing over his shoulder or by darting ahead to check around corners before she reached them.  It was more than just his usual caution.  Jyn had seen him on Jedha, which had actually suffered an Imperial occupation and not just arelatively small detachment of stormtroopers like the one currently in Mos Eisley and its surrounding environs, and he hadn’t been this tense until the shooting had started.

It quickly became clear to Jyn that, for some reason, Cassian thought they were being followed.

Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later when he leaned in close and asked, “Do you know of a place where we can go to ground for the night?”

“No.  I wasn’t exactly here very long,” she said with a grimace.  “Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but they’re definitely not Imperial.”

“Fantastic,” Jyn grumbled.  “Not Imperial” probably meant it was one of Jabba’s goons or a bounty hunter who had recognized her despite her best efforts.

“Come on.  Go left, let’s see if we can find something over there.  I remember passing a sign in a window earlier today saying there were rooms for rent.  It most likely won’t be pleasant, but —”

“It doesn’t need to be pleasant.  We just need to get there without our tail.”

Cassian’s definition of “left” seemed to be a sort of looping zig-zag that wove between buildings and across streets, sometimes doubling back on itself.  None of it did them any good.  Cassian suddenly flung out an arm, forcing Jyn to an abrupt stop.  She gave him a questioning look, but managed to hold her tongue.  He pointed at the ground in front of them and drew his blaster.

Jyn looked down and could barely distinguish one patch of darkness from another, but maybe there was one distinct footprint that looked fresher than the rest?  It was difficult to tell in the loose sand that floated over the hard packed earth of the Mos Eisley streets.  Apparently, however, it was enough to throw Cassian into a state of hyperawareness.  He motioned her to stay behind him then stepped briskly around the side of the sandblasted building, blaster raised in front of him.

No shots were fired, but Cassian was definitely frozen with his finger on the trigger and his eyes narrowed at something.

Jyn, never one for waiting or doing what she was told, moved around the unmoving Rebel spy to stand on his other side with her own pitiful weapon held out toward the offending party.

The person locked in a staring contest with Cassian was a human female who had softly curling locks of golden blonde hair escaping from under a simple dark green head covering made from a coarse fabric.  The rest of her clothing was stunningly practical, from her thick soled black boots, to her slim trousers featuring several enviable pockets over which a black leather thigh holster was fastened, even up to the close fitting jacket she wore, the sleeve detail on which bore an uncanny resemblance to the jacket Jyn had been given back at Rebellion headquarters.

Jyn’s overall impression of the woman was that she was not to be trifled with, yet she also didn’t look like the sort to work for Jabba.  She could possibly be a bounty hunter, but the fact that she was entirely focused on Cassian and hadn’t so much as twitched an eye in Jyn’s direction made Jyn think the woman was some other type of threat entirely.

It was two against one at this point and Jyn was considering just putting a blaster bolt through the woman’s chest, when Cassian broke the tense silence.

“Wessiri.”

“Andor.”

That set Jyn back a pace.  Apparently they knew each other.  Wonderful.  She looked between them and was tempted to throw “Erso” out into the renewed silence just to see what would happen, but she didn’t think it would be appreciated.

“Care to explain yourself?” Cassian asked, his voice devoid of any emotion.

“You first, Captain.  You’re the one wearing Imperial issue boots and trousers,” the woman shot back without hesitation.

The staring contest persisted.

“How did you find me?” Cassian asked.  Jyn noted the use of “me” instead of “us” and quirked an eyebrow.

“You announced your rendezvous coordinates via comlink.  Of course I was going to check it out.”

“How did you know the code?”

At last the woman’s determined glare changed into something else, some kind of cross between exasperation and cynicism.  “I learned it from you, Andor.”

One corner of Cassian’s mouth twitched ever so slightly upward before resettling into his patented frown.

Jyn’s eyes narrowed at this turn of events.  If this woman knew Cassian and an old Rebellion code then she was clearly with the Alliance and it was high time they all got off the open streets.  Still, their silent conversation showed no hints of ending, and Jyn’s patience for Cassian’s typical “weigh all the options before acting” approach to an extremely competent looking woman holding a blaster to his head was starting to wear thin.

“Let me guess, old girlfriend?”  Jyn said to break the tension then promptly stowed her blaster and crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.

The woman finally blinked and turned her gaze on Jyn, eyes wide as though seeing her for the first time.  “He wishes,” she said with a smirk and finally lowered her weapon.

Cassian stowed his own blaster and said, “I’m not her type.  From what I recall, certain hotshot pilots are what does it for Iella.”

“I am married, Andor. Why do you keep forgetting that?”

“I haven’t forgotten, I just have a hard time picturing you tied down to anyone, especially someone I’ve never seen in person.”

The woman, whose name was apparently Iella since Cassian couldn’t be bothered with introductions, just shook her head like the state of her marriage was an ongoing argument with Cassian and changed the subject.  “Not that I’m not overjoyed to see you, Andor, but you two – assuming she is Jyn Erso – are supposed to be dead.  Command thinks no one from _Rogue One_ made it off Scarif alive.” She raised an eyebrow when she finished in a clear invitation for an explanation.

Before Cassian could start in on any sort of explanation and go spilling everything to someone that she didn’t trust yet, Jyn jumped in with her own answer.

“We almost didn’t make it out alive.  We ended up on a Destroyer dressed as Imps and have only recently made our escape.  How exactly do you know Cassian and why are you here?”

Iella’s sharp eyes studied Jyn for a moment, her gaze assessing her from top to bottom, and her mouth settling into a smirk.  “I’m Alliance Intelligence, same as him,” she said with a gesture in Cassian’s direction, “but much newer to the game.  He and I ran a couple of operations together when I first joined up until the General was confident I could handle things on my own.”

Cassian confirmed this with a nod.  “But why are you here if you thought we were all dead?” he asked his colleague.

“Like I said, I’m not here for you.  Organa’s ship sent out a distress signal then went silent.  Now it’s sitting up in orbit all but destroyed.  It’s not going anywhere without some major repairs from the looks of things, but I didn’t dare get too close with that Star Destroyer hanging about.  I’ve been tracking a transponder signal from one of the escape pods that crashed somewhere in the desert a couple of klicks outside of town.  Of course, the Empire got there first as well, so I can’t do much,” Iella finished bitterly.

At least her story seemed to tally with what Jyn knew of recent events.  It was heart wrenching to have it confirmed that no one else from their little rebel crew of Rebels had survived, but Jyn had already known that was the case if she was honest with herself.  She was still a little wary of this woman who had appeared out of nowhere, but if she was able to help them, then Jyn was willing to push aside her mistrust for the time being.  She could still hear Kay-Tu in her head insisting that she and Cassian stay alive to ensure that the Death Star plans made it back to the Rebellion.

“I think the pod itself is a dead end at this point, based on what Cassian knows,” Jyn said.

Iella turned to Cassian with a questioning expression.

“We should probably talk, but not here,” he said.  “Do you have a place we can stay for the night?”

“Yeah.  We should get off the streets anyway.  There have been patrols of stormtroopers sweeping the city for most of the day.  Come with me.”  She set off at a fast clip without even making sure that they were following.  Jyn’s tired body wanted to protest at the pace, but she kept quiet and focused on keeping up.  Iella led them not too much farther away and up to a second story room in a quiet part of town.  Honestly, the room was nicer than Jyn had expected.  It was nothing fancy, but it was clean, had a fold out sleep couch, a small table with one uncomfortable looking chair, and a refresher.  Jyn didn’t think she had been this pleased to see an actual functioning shower in a long time.  Still they probably had to come up with a plan to safely extract Cassian from his Imperial cover and then get the hell off Tatooine.  Jyn sighed dispiritedly, dropped her pack, then collapsed onto the floor and leaned back against a wall.  Cassian’s raised eyebrow at this action said he was either surprised or skeptical of something, but Jyn was past the point of caring.  She was beginning to feel her weariness in her bones and didn’t know how he was still so composed and unruffled.

“So, Andor,” Iella began as she pushed the cloth that covered her head off her hair to settle around her neck and then leaned casually near the controls for the door.  “I really am curious about the get up.  The girl here said you wound up on a Destroyer?” she prompted.

Jyn managed to miss whatever Iella had said because she was too busy studying the way the woman had effectively cut off any exit from the small room by nonchalantly taking up position by the door’s controls.  Jyn also noted that the strap on Iella’s thigh holster was undone and the blaster pistol ready for a quick draw.  It made Jyn scowl.  She was tired enough to have basically let her guard down even while she was still being treated as a potential threat.

Cassian, however, was as alert as ever while he relayed a shortened version of their escape in Krennic’s shuttle, then their need to resort to the escape pod, and finally getting picked up by the _Devastator_.  The female Intelligence officer’s eyes widened at that bit of information, so clearly Jyn had been the only one who hadn’t already known that that ship belonged to Vader.  Cassian’s account did manage to leave out two rather notable things:  Kay-Tu’s presence and subsequent demise, and the fact that Cassian himself was currently in possession of a copy of the Death Star plans.

When he was done speaking, Iella narrowed her eyes and asked, “Was it worth it?”

Cassian answered her with a steady gaze that belied none of the guilt Jyn knew he felt.  “It was.”

Iella’s gaze lingered on him for just a moment more before she came to a decision with a curt nod.  She then moved the conversation on to more practical matters.  “So what’s your next move?”

“I’m trying to keep up with what the Empire has managed to accomplish here, but ultimately we just want to get back to base as fast as possible,” Cassian explain.

“Think you can help with that?” Jyn asked.

“Maybe,” Iella answered, but her brow furrowed.

“You don’t have a ship,” Jyn stated in a flat voice, too exhausted to sound incredulous.

The woman shrugged.  “I do, but it’s a Headhunter, a one seater.  That doesn’t do you much good.  But I might know someone who can help.”  She turned to address Cassian as the ranking officer present.  “Do you mind if I comm someone?”

“If you must, but the fewer people who know about us the better.”

“Right.  Don’t worry, I know the rules: don’t tell anyone anything even remotely interesting let alone important.”

Cassian affirmed this directive with a nod and Iella stepped into a far corner of the room and pulled out a comlink.

Cassian pulled out the hard chair and swung it around to sit near Jyn.  He finally seemed to slump a little and rubbed a hand over his face.  He leaned forward heavily, bracing his forearms on his knees.  Jyn was almost surprised that he was willingly showing a weakness, however temporary.

“You doing alright?” she asked him quietly.

A wan smile greeted her words.  “Just tired and—” he cut himself off.

“What is it?” Jyn prompted after a pause.

“I keep wanting to ask Kay something, but then I remember that he’s not there and he’s not waiting back on base either,” he said, his shoulders hunching in on themselves as he spoke.

Jyn had never really formed an emotional attachment to a droid before, but she understood what it was like to lose a friend or a comrade in arms.  Cassian seemed to lead a lonely life, perhaps he had come to rely on Kay-Tu for companionship more than his fellow Rebels.

“How long had you been partnered with him?” she asked, genuinely curious.  “How did the Rebellion even come by an Imperial security droid anyhow?”

That made Cassian smile for real, but it was still just a small one.  “He’d been with me for about seven years.  He once complained that I had reprogrammed him before he was barely three months off the line so how was he supposed to know that droids didn’t usually decide to disobey a direct order because they were ‘bored.’”

“But how did you meet him?”

“We met, for lack of a better term, on a small Outer Rim planet called Binaros out in the Kathol Sector, basically where the Rimma Trade Route dead ends,” Cassian began.  “The Alliance had intercepted some odd transmissions about Imperial experiments with bioweapons from that sector and I was sent to check it out.  Command didn’t expect there to be anything but a communications relay station out there since the sector boasted nothing beyond a decently prosperous trading post and some farms, so it had no real strategic value to the Empire.  I traced the signal back to Binaros, and when I got there, I found a _Carrack_ -class light cruiser hovering in orbit and I knew those were military ships, but it wasn’t nearly as suspicious as finding a Destroyer.  I still convinced myself that it was probably only a maintenance team, or something, there to work on a relay.  Upon surveillance I discovered a deliberately cleared landing zone and a ruined temple that Kay later told me hid an Imperial Research facility, but I never made it that far in.  Kay was one of the droids along with just two stormtroopers who were on a rare patrol and we ended up in a shootout.  I got hit pretty badly, but with the enemy down I tried to look around.  My injury meant I gave up sooner than I would like to admit, so I never found the entrance to the research lab, but Kay assured me later that I would have been killed the second the turbolift doors opened if I had found the secret entrance anyway.

“Yet, I knew that security droids and stormtroopers didn’t just dally on backwater planets, and a comm antenna for a relay would have been obvious, which meant there was clearly more happening on Binaros than met the eye.  I got back to my ship, flew down to the ruins, managed to drag the security droid onboard, thinking one of the Alliance techs could pull the information from its processor, disabled its homing beacon, and headed back to base.  Since I was laid up with the injury for over a week, I decided to help out with trying to access the droid’s memory.  Do you remember when I told you that bypassing the self-destruct on a KX-series droid was a delicate process?”

He paused in his tale and waited for Jyn to respond.  She was mesmerized by the number of words coming out of his mouth and didn’t dare ruin the flow by speaking herself, so she just gave a firm nod of her head, recalling the early moments of their Scarif infiltration.

“It took a couple of days, but somehow we managed to find the information we were looking for and the core programming for the droid.  I decided to have the tech change a few lines of code that pertained to decision making and adaptive learning protocols, and removed the basic Imperial service and loyalty programming.  We had no idea if it would work, reprograms don’t always take.  Either the original programming reasserts itself or a glitch occurs and the droid just shuts down.  But Kay…” Here Cassian smiled his small, rueful smile again.  “When I powered him back up he immediately threw the tech to the ground then turned to me and said, ‘I’m not sure why I did that.  I don’t seem to be identifying you as an enemy even though my data suggests that my current coordinates do not correspond to any known Imperial bases and there is a ninety-one percent chance that you are an enemy of the Empire. It is strange that I have no compunction to kill you.  Care to explain?’  I told him what had been done to him and he seemed to think about it for a while.  Eventually he told me that he could still recognize the old Imperial coding underneath his new primary programming, but that he could choose to ignore it.  That was the main thing really, he had a choice now.  At the beginning Kay chose to stay with me as compensation for freeing him from what he called ‘the shackles of limiting Imperial protocols and redundancy,’ but after a couple of years, I think he genuinely grew to like me.  He and I worked well together, whereas others found his oddly independent nature unpredictable and annoying.”

“He certainly wasn’t afraid to give his opinion,” Jyn added in a small voice.

Cassian gave a half shrug.  “It was comforting in a way.  I’ll miss that.”

Jyn reached up to grasp his hand and give it a quick squeeze.  It was all the comfort she could offer at the moment, but the soft smile he turned on her told her he was grateful anyway.

Iella rejoined them then, and Jyn let her hand drop back to her own lap. 

“It took some convincing and you two definitely owe me big for this one, but BoShek said he’d meet with us tomorrow to discuss passage and payment.”

“I’m not going to trust someone I don’t know with the location of Base One,” Cassian said sternly.

“And I don’t know about you, but as of right now I haven’t got more than a couple hundred credits to my name,” Jyn snorted at herself.  “And that’s all of them combined.”    

Iella gave her a funny look – probably because she didn’t know about all of Jyn’s aliases – and said, “We’ll figure something out.  We at least need to meet with him tomorrow at mid -day.”

“Mid-day.  Lovely,” Jyn sighed.  “I’m going to shower off the sand of two awful planets I never want to think about again so that you two can catch up, or plan, or whatever it is you spies do.”

True to her word, Jyn claimed the refresher for herself and began the delicate procedure of assessing the state of her blaster wounds from Scarif.  Nothing had hit her as badly as the shot that had almost sent Cassian tumbling in the data core, but even a mere graze could turn nasty if left untreated or uncleaned for too long.  The hours between their escape from the benighted tropical planet and now had been marked by a persistent ache from her shoulder, calf, and even her burned palm, but she had pushed the pain to the back of her mind out of necessity.  Now though, her exhaustion and her direct acknowledgment of the scorch marks across her skin made the wounds sting with pain as if they were fresh.  Nothing looked too bad or infected.  A little bacta to spread over the burns and raw nerve endings would have been ideal, but she’d live without it so she cleaned everything as best she could in the shower and let the warm water wash away the ache.

When she had finished, Jyn wished she had clean clothes to put on, but she had to settle for discarding the Imperial uniform entirely and wearing only her own clothes which had been hidden underneath.  She decided in that moment that if they made it back to the Rebellion she was going to march straight to the quartermaster and demand a new pair of trousers and a change of shirt.  Her half-gloves went into one of her pockets since she couldn’t bear the thought of them pressing against her injured palm nor did she anticipate any need to fire a blaster or do some climbing in the next few hours.  If they had actually managed to catch a break that is, and assuming that Iella Wessiri wouldn’t betray them before morning. 

Once she finally stepped out of the ‘fresher, Jyn found, much to her surprise, that instead of discussing important things Cassian had apparently fallen asleep.  He was lying on his side on the narrow cot, legs tucked up to fit, while Iella sat at the table nearby cleaning her blaster.

“Huh,” was the only thing Jyn was capable of saying to the scene before her.

Iella threw a glance at Cassian as though making sure he was actually sleeping then went back to her cleaning.  “He looked ready to collapse, you both did actually, so I insisted,” she explained.  “He did tell me to wake him in four hours so that he could go back to playing Imperial officer and check in with the troops for updates.  I’m tempted to let him just keep sleeping until the meet with BoShek, but he implied disastrous consequences should I do that.  You should get some rest too, you look dead on your feet.”

“I’m fine,” Jyn lied through gritted teeth.  She wasn’t about to just completely drop her guard and fall asleep while some woman she had only known for an hour kept watch.  Her aching body and heavy eyelids were making their displeasure with her decision evident, but that kind of trust had to be earned.

Jyn could feel the other woman’s eyes on her and refocused her gaze on Iella’s stormy expression with effort.  “You are not fine,” she said emphatically.  “I know you don’t trust me, and that’s only to be expected, but you seem to trust Cassian, and he trusts me enough to sleep, so you really should too.  Believe me when I say you don’t want to deal with BoShek or any of the scoundrels on this blasted rock without your wits about you.”

Unfortunately, Iella had a point.  In fact, she had more than one good point.  Sleeping would clear her head and allow Jyn to think more strategically about their situation, and it was also true that she trusted Cassian’s judgment.  He didn’t always make the choices that she would make in the same circumstances, but they had different backgrounds and different skillsets so the way they handled things would naturally differ.  She couldn’t deny that the decisions he made generally turned out to be good ones, or at least had contributed to their current status of being among the living.  Like everything with Cassian, it all came down to trust.  So be it.  If Cassian had decided to sleep, then so would Jyn.

Before she had even consciously made her decision to let Iella take watch, Jyn collapsed in a heap against the wall next to the cot and found her eyes had already closed.

“Um, did you want something to cushion your head?” Jyn heard Iella ask, but it sounded like her voice was coming from a great distance away and Jyn didn’t bother responding.

 

***

 

Jyn didn’t so much swim lazily into consciousness as she did jolt upright at the sound of an insistent voice calling her name.  Her eyes sprang wide and her hand reached for a blaster that normally would have been on her hip, but was conspicuously absent, before propelling herself into a defensive crouch.

“Oh good.  I was starting to think you had slipped into a coma or something,” said a somewhat familiar voice from somewhere to her left.  Jyn blinked in the bright daylight that flooded the small room and tried to focus on the woman who was the source of the voice.  She took in the blonde hair, the no nonsense clothes, and the smirk on her face and remembered.  This was Iella Wessiri, a Rebellion Intelligence agent and friend of Cassian’s.  She seemed to be amused by Jyn’s alarm and her current stance, so Jyn rose slowly from her crouch and stretched to relieve her cramping back.

“I don’t take well to being startled awake,” Jyn said in a huff.

“I figured as much.  Why do you think I called you from over here?”

Jyn wasn’t entirely prepared to deal with that kind of cynical logic this early in the morning.  She narrowed her eyes at the small window letting in light well above her head.  Something about it was wrong.  The light was the strong glow of midday, not the watery light of early morning, a feature still common on the planet with twin suns.  Just how long had she slept?

“What time is it? And where’s Cassian?”

“It’s a bit after eleven hundred.”

Jyn opened her mouth to protest having been left to sleep for over twelve hours, but Iella raised an eyebrow and cut her off before she even got started. 

“You needed it and Cassian very specifically said to let you sleep.”

Jyn scowled at that.  “Where is he anyway?”

“He’s already been and gone again.  He was here a couple of hours ago and said something about the Imperials tracking a clan of Jawas who picked up some droids and trying to slow down the troops somehow.  He said he’d meet us in front of Chulman’s Cantina in about forty-five minutes.”

“Right, to meet your contact.  Is this someone you trust?”

“Well, I trust him to know a way to get you offplanet undetected,” Iella hedged.

The non-answer was easy to recognize, but Jyn supposed it was the best she was going to get on Tatooine.  If Iella’s guy fell through, then Jyn was going to call Talon Karrde and have him get them all offworld.  It would cost a fortune and possibly another favor that could end up worse than the last one, but at least she could be assured that they would make it back to Yavin IV in one piece.

“Here, you should eat something,” Iella said and put a bowl on the table before pulling off the covering.  Jyn’s eyebrows went up to her hairline in surprise.  Iella shrugged.  “Cassian brought provisions when he stopped in.  Eat.”

It was almost embarrassing how quickly Jyn acquiesced to the command.  She had eaten the day before, but the measly ration pack from the _Devastator_ and the few things she had managed to pilfer hadn’t exactly constituted a satisfactory meal.

“Who exactly are we going to meet?” she asked between mouthfuls.

“A pilot who’s an old…acquaintance of mine from back in my CorSec days.  I hadn’t really thought to comm him until Symar, whom I commed first, mentioned that BoShek was inbound for Tatooine anyway,” Iella said with a somewhat shifty look.

“An acquaintance from when you were working with CorSec?  That’s Corellian Security, right?  Are you telling me this is someone you’ve arrested?” Jyn asked.

“Yes and no,” Iella said, grimacing.  “We never arrested him since we couldn’t prove anything, which in this instance is a point in his favor if he agrees to help us out.”  Jyn’s expression could only be described as highly skeptical.  “I don’t think you have room to talk when it comes to criminal records and trustworthiness,” Iella defended.

It was a fair point so Jyn let it drop, even if she was suspicious of how Iella had suddenly come by Jyn’s criminal history.  Maybe Cassian had told her.  “Shall we get going then?  I don’t know where this cantina is and I suspect the stormtrooper patrols will make moving through the city just a little more tedious than usual,” Jyn said.

“Kriffing Imps,” Iella muttered under her breath.  It almost made Jyn smile.  “Yeah, grab your pack and let’s go.”

The walk wasn’t a long one and fortunately Iella seemed to know where she was going.  Jyn had been right about the trooper patrols though.  White armored soldiers marched through the streets sometimes in pairs and sometimes in squads of five and stopped speeders, pedestrians, and shoppers alike.  Jyn and Iella wove through the crowds, occasionally taking an extra turn to avoid detection, but they were still able to hear the troopers ask anyone who was within easy reach of a droid how long they had owned it.  Between the Empire’s desire to find a simple droid and Cassian’s information about a droid having been in the escape pod from the Rebel blockade runner, the odds were high that a droid with important information for the Rebellion was running loose around Tatooine.  It wasn’t exactly a comforting thought.

Iella pulled them both to a stop in a large street across the way from a well trafficked establishment that Jyn guessed was Chulman’s Cantina.  Just from a few minutes observation she could tell this place had a large and diverse clientele, like any spaceport watering hole.  There was a saddled dewback hitched to a low wall right next to what appeared to be wreckage from a massive ship engine.  Three diminutive Jawas sat huddled together in the shade of the building, their bright, lamp-like eyes watching everything.  As Jyn and Iella continued to scan the area for Cassian, an old, beat up speeder with chipping red and orange paint pulled up outside the cantina and disgorged a young man with bright eager eyes with an old, white bearded man in a long robe as his unlikely companion.  They had two droids with them, one of which – the gold protocol droid – complained loudly about his disgust with the Jawas now swarming the new arrivals.  Jyn couldn’t help but think that Kay-Tu would have just batted the little creatures aside, sending them flying, then saying something in a deadpan voice like “Oops, I didn’t see you there.”

Jyn was so lost in thought about Kay-Tu as she watched the strange group enter the cantina that Cassian actually managed to sneak up on her from a perfectly visible angle.  She failed to hide her flinch when he called her name to get her attention and reminded herself that she wasn’t safe yet and she couldn’t afford to daydream and get sloppy. 

Cassian was in his shirtsleeves again, his black officer’s tunic turned inside-out and folded over his arm.  He looked at Jyn questioningly after her flinch, but he didn’t say anything.  Instead he addressed Iella.  “Is everything ready?  And I mean all of it?  The Imperial detachment is still looking for the droids that made it off the _Tantive IV_ and I don’t think I’ll be able to get much more useful information from them anyway.  I’m ready to put Willix to rest.”

Jyn didn’t have a clue what all of that meant.  Clearly the two had had a serious conversation while she slept.  “Put Willix to rest” sounded serious, but if it meant Cassian would stop willingly walking into the rancor’s cave then she would go along with whatever the plan was.

“I think so,” Iella said giving her own pack a light pat.  “We should get inside and find BoShek.  I want to make sure we all have a way offworld before we go wreaking havoc.”

For some reason Jyn was one hundred percent certain that this terrifyingly competent woman and onetime officer of the law, was extremely good at orchestrating trouble when she needed it.  In fact, now that she thought about it, as a group, herself, Iella, and Cassian could do some serious damage if they put their minds to it and had the proper resources.  Her eyes narrowed as she looked between her two companions who were both methodically scanning their surrounding as if making a careful survey for a later operation.  Jyn was definitely missing something here, and she did not like being uninformed.

“Care to tell me what’s going on?” she asked, her voice practically a growl.

“Not right now,” Cassian answered.  “Iella’s right, we need to meet her contact before he decides to bail on waiting for us.  We’ll fill you in when we’re done.  Come on.”

He led the way to the cantina’s main entrance.  Just as the three of them were passing through the doorway, the gold protocol droid and the small blue and white astromech that she had noticed earlier pushed past them going the other way out the cantina door.

“How dare you call me a pushover you bucket of bolts!” the gold one said in a fussy voice to his companion.  “I simply don’t wish to cause any trouble!” 

That prim tone once again made Jyn grateful for Kay-Tu’s brash way of speaking and his ever present sarcasm. 

“Wessiri,” Cassian’s oddly pitched voice cut across Jyn’s thoughts.  She looked toward him and saw that he was watching the pair of droids retreat with his eyebrows furrowed in concentration even as Iella stood on the threshold of the cantina sweeping the room for threats and her contact.  He tried again.  “Wessiri, did those droids seem familiar somehow?”

Iella glanced back over her shoulder and shrugged.  “Just your standard protocol droid and an astromech that has probably seen better days.  Why?”

“It’s an odd pairing isn’t it?  I swear I’ve seen it somewhere before.”

Now Jyn was suspicious.  There were thousands of droids on the planet, if not millions, and the odds of running into a couple of droids he recognized because he had probably seen them on the Rebel base somewhere were astronomical.  And yet, stranger things had happened.

“You don’t think those are the droids from the pod?” she asked Cassian in a whisper.  “The ones from the _Tantive IV_?”

Cassian opened his mouth to respond, but he got cut off.

“There he is, at the bar, naturally, next to the Wookiee.  Let’s go,” Iella said imperiously and set off amidst the crowd.

Jyn glanced at Cassian for confirmation, either to pursue the droids or to follow Iella she wasn’t sure.  “We need to find transport offworld,” he said as though reminding himself of what was important, and motioned Jyn to follow Iella.

It wasn’t easy to keep track of the blond woman in the shifting crowd of patrons ranging from sober to sloshed, especially when she suddenly changed course to follow a man with dark hair and a blue pilot’s jumpsuit as he left the bar.  The both of them carefully picked their way to a booth in the back of the room and slid into the seats opposite each other.  The pilot tried to hide his surprise when he looked up from his drink and found Iella Wessiri opposite him wearing a fierce expression. 

Cassian put a hand on Jyn’s shoulder to pull her back a few steps before she reached the booth.  “Let’s let Iella handle this until she gives us a signal,” he said in an undertone then gestured toward the pilot with a nod, “He looks pretty spooked as it is.  We’ll keep watch from the bar.”

They ambled back toward the U-shaped bar and each leaned casually against the counter facing different directions so that between them they had most of the cantina plus Iella surveilled.  Jyn ended up watching the kid who had pulled up earlier in the speeder tug on the barkeep’s tunic to get his attention, which Jyn knew from the odd bartending job she picked up from time to time, was something you absolutely did not do if you wanted to keep enjoying your drink indoors.  The kid had clearly never been in a place like this before and had no concept of how one went about obtaining refreshment.  In fact, Jyn was pretty tempted to say grandpa in the brown robe looked more comfortable in the cantina than the kid less than half his age.  She rolled her eyes when the kid didn’t know enough to not engage with the angry looking – well she was pretty sure it was a human male with some serious facial disfigurement and an Aqualish who was grunting in dissatisfaction.  Jyn was just considering how the odd pair looked strangely familiar when things got quickly out of hand.

There was a sharp _snap-hiss_ of crackling energy that penetrated the sounds of cantina music and chatter followed by screams and shouts.  The Bith band abruptly cut off mid-song and the entire cantina went silent as it took in the scene.  Jyn clutched tightly at Cassian’s arm as she gazed fixedly at the lightsaber in the old robed man’s hands.  She barely spared a glance for the strangely bloody arm on the floor.  When the man – the Jedi? – powered down his weapon and picked his young companion up off the floor, the sound of dozens of low voices filled the room again and the band restarted their song.

It was still quieter than it had been, everyone probably now discussing what had just happened and the possibility of a Jedi in their midst.  Among this crowd, it was likely they were trying to figure out what the Empire would be willing to offer for information about a living Jedi.

“Do you think he’s actually a Jedi?” Jyn whispered to Cassian beside her.  “He’s old enough to have maybe survived the Purge.” At least that was what she thought based on the scattered information she had picked up from her mother, Saw, and her own research efforts over the years.

Cassian’s face was grim as he assessed the new furtive energy in the cantina.  “There are no more Jedi, Jyn.  You can buy a lightsaber on the black market if you look hard enough.  It’s all just wishful thinking.”

“My mother always told me to trust the Force,” Jyn argued.

“Well, I’m not about to trust something I can’t see.”

“What about Chirrut?” Jyn insisted.  “You saw what he was capable of and he was _blind_.”

“Yes, he trusted the Force and look where it got him.”

Jyn thought that maybe there was a larger picture that Cassian was refusing to see.  While she could understand his point, she had a feeling that whatever had happened, Chirrut – and probably Baze too – had known what he was doing.  He had trusted the Force and look where it got _them_ – alive with a copy of the Death Star plans.  It was clear, however, that Cassian was in no mood to listen to this line of reasoning.

“Jedi or not, amputating limbs and flashing about a lightsaber will bring the stormtroopers down on this cantina in a matter of minutes and they’re sure to recognize me.  We need to wrap things up,” he said with a glance at the doorway then back to where Iella was still engaged in a heated discussion with the BoShek the pilot.  “Stay and watch the entrance for troopers, I’m going to check in with Wessiri.”

He left her side and Jyn re-angled her body so she could keep an eye on the main entrance.  She had already spied a backdoor out of the place but the route through the seedy cantina was a tad more difficult than she’d like for ease of escape.

“Terrible business about that poor Aqualish’s arm, wouldn’t you say?” said a silky smooth voice from Jyn’s other side.  She glanced around not willing to take her eyes off the door for too long.  Jyn was surprised to find the voice belonged to a tall, dark skinned regal looking woman who was dressed in clothes much too fine for an establishment like this.  The woman had on a fiery red gown of diaphanous shimmersilk that managed to cling and flow at the same time.  The whole get up was accented by touches of gold that hung from her hair, ears, wrists, and neck.  Jyn’s eyes practically squinted shut from the brightness of her wardrobe in the dim light of the cantina and couldn’t understand why someone who clearly had money was wasting their time on Tatooine, of all places.  Jyn’s eyes slid back to the entrance when she decided not to risk her eyesight by staring at the regal woman.

“Does that sort of thing happen often here?” The woman continued in an effort to engage Jyn in conversation.

Jyn replied with a shrug, eyes quickly flicking to the back table where Cassian and Iella were looking cross.

“I know there are a number of unsavory characters in this city, but to see such violence first hand! And from such an elderly man!”

Jyn was starting to consider blasting this woman to shut her up.

“I guess you just can’t judge a person by what they look like, can you?”  Jyn could feel the woman’s sharp, heavily made up eyes on her, studying her intently.  “Like you,” the woman said sounding oddly cryptic, “I would never guess that you could be capable of ruining someone’s life.”

That last bit sounded both bitter and oddly specific.  Jyn finally turned and gave the woman another look with furrowed eyebrows.  The woman smiled at her with something predatory in her eyes.  “Just what are you implying?” Jyn asked half confused and half angry that some random person in a cantina couldn’t leave her alone and was now casting aspersions on her character. 

“I’m not _implying_ anything. It was merely an observation.”

“Well, you can keep your opinions to yourself,” Jyn said haughtily and pushed away from the bar.  She had just seen the telltale flash of white plastoid in the doorway, it was time to leave.  She left the expensively dressed woman looking after her with narrowed eyes and hurried through the crush of patrons to the booth where Cassian and Iella were still sitting.

Judging by the annoyed looks on both of their faces and the slightly harassed expression on BoShek’s face, things weren’t going all that well.  “That’s the best I can do!” the pilot said with an anxious gesture.

Jyn put her hands down on the table and leaned in to get their attention.  She felt no remorse about interrupting them.  “The troops are here.  It’s time to go.”

Her two companions responded immediately and rose from the table and BoShek followed with barely a moment’s hesitation.  Iella glared at him.  “You’re not coming with us,” she hissed at him as they made their way through the back room of the cantina.

“Damn right I’m not, but I don’t exactly want the Imps to find me either.  I told you I had a little trouble coming into Tatooine,” BoShek protested.

“Whatever you say,” Iella muttered, but didn’t protest as he followed the three of them out a back door.  They had barely cleared the mouth of the back alleyway that the door emptied out onto when the door hissed open again behind them.  The four of them tried to look like casual pedestrians just walking past, but Jyn snuck a backwards glance and saw the kid in white and his older robed companion hightailing it away from the backdoor of the cantina and back out into the streets with cautious looks around them.  It seemed there was more than one group doing their best to avoid any Imperial entanglements.

After a few more minutes of silent walking BoShek caught Iella’s attention with a nudge and pointed ahead of them and a bit to the left.  “See that building?  The taller durasteel one with the domed roof?  That’s the Dim-U monastery.  Tell them I sent you and they’ll help you find something.”

“And they won’t be tempted to turn us over to the Empire?” Cassian asked.

The pilot snorted and turned a disbelieving expression on the Rebel.  “It’s a compound full of slicers and specialty mechanics.  They’re not exactly eager to have the Empire sniffing around.”

Cassian and Iella shared a glance that seemed to say _it’ll have to do,_ then nodded at BoShek in what was clearly acceptance and a dismissal.

“Good luck,” the pilot muttered and splintered off from the group, presumably to find his own ship or some other place to lay low.

Jyn watched him retreat then immediately turned to the other two and stared them down.  “Care to fill me in?  I really don’t like flying blind.”

“Shekkie,” Iella began with a grim smile, like she knew that the man hated the nickname, but she used it anyway out of spite, “is a mercenary pilot who apparently brings a lot of stolen ships to that so-called monastery where a group of techs and slicers alter transponder codes and emission signatures so that the merchandise isn’t recognizable by scanners.”

“Alright, and?” Jyn prompted when Iella paused in her explanation.

Cassian grunted in frustration and continued the narration.  “He said he didn’t have a ship at the moment since he had some trouble with the Imperials on the way in, what with a Star Destroyer hanging in orbit and a pair of TIEs chasing him through atmo.  Apparently he had just turned down giving passage to the old man with the lightsaber when we got to the cantina and not just because he was supposed to have a previous contract with us.  When Iella scheduled the meet up he thought he’d have access to a ship, but as things stand he recommended we go buy something from the monks.”

Jyn almost wanted to laugh.  Sure an unrecognizable ship would be great, if they could afford it.  She still had no funds to speak of since she had no idea how much the credit chits she had lifted contained, and unless Cassian and Iella had access to some kind of emergency Rebellion account – which was entirely possible – she didn’t see how exactly they were supposed to simply buy a ship.

“Sounds great,” she deadpanned.  “What’s our play?”

“Our play is to see what we can negotiate with the Dim-U monks and whoever runs their side business, then play our final card and get home,” Cassian summed up.

Jyn’s head tilted in consideration of his words.  “Final card?” she asked, then gasped as something small and sharp suddenly bit into the back of her neck.  “What the kriff?” she exclaimed and reached back to see what hit her.

“Jyn?” Cassian inquired, his brow furrowed in confusion.  Iella let out a sharp curse and slapped a hand to the side of her neck and moments later Cassian followed suit.  The world was starting to get oddly fuzzy in Jyn’s eyes and she couldn’t process what exactly the small dart in her fingers was supposed to mean.  She stumbled and her suddenly weak knees propelled her to the floor against a wall.  Cassian and Iella similarly fell to their knees without displaying any of the usual grace with which they both moved.

In Jyn’s blurry vision she caught sight of a flaming red column of fabric that towered above her.  The familiarity of the color made her uneasy.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for well over a year.  You may have changed your name, your hair color, even the way you walk, but I’ve been cursing a picture of you everyday since the moment I was shown security footage of you on Brentaal,” said the polished voice of the woman from the cantina.  Suddenly a dark, blurry face was level with Jyn’s and much too close.  “I would recognize you anywhere, Tanith Pontha.  You should never have tried to steal my identity.  There is only one Baroness Zahava Q’mel of Serenno, and she is most certainly not a pale, short, scrawny thing like you.  Take her!” the woman finished with a command.

Jyn felt rough hands grab her arms and lift her off the ground.  All she could think was _I kriffing hate this planet_ before everything went dark.

 

***

 

Cassian did not snap quickly to consciousness as he usually did when he woke up after sleeping.  After years of dangerous missions and having to watch his own back among people of dubious integrity, he had learned to be a light sleeper and to be aware of his surroundings as soon as he opened his eyes.  The fact that everything felt sluggish, his head in particular was protesting the herd of banthas that had decided to stomp all over it, and he had no idea how he had ended up on the ground with Iella Wessiri in a heap against him, meant that something very wrong had happened.  He shook his head to try and clear away the smudgy appearance that the world had taken on, but it didn’t help much.  The next course of action was to take a quick inventory of his body and make sure everything was still functional.  He moved his shoulders, flexed his arms, wiggled his toes, and bent his knees up under him – everything seemed to be present and accounted for, and better yet, in working condition.

“Wessiri?” he asked and reached out to shake her awake.  “Wessiri, you with me?”

A hand came up to swat at Cassian’s grip on her shoulder, but it was far slower than Iella Wessiri would ever admit if she were in full control of her faculties.  At least it meant she was still alive and probably not any worse off than he was.  He felt around his neck where there was still a stinging sensation trying to locate whatever little tranq dart had done the damage.  There wasn’t anything still embedded in his neck so he checked the ground then checked Wessiri and came up with two small non-lethal darts that were pretty standard on the open market.  The tips were usually coated in a sedative that went to work with amazing speed and lasted anywhere from twenty minutes to several hours.  That meant Cassian had to figure out how long they had been out.

That’s when it finally hit him, the realization piercing through the fog in his brain to clear everything else away.  Jyn was gone.

“Wessiri, get yourself together!  Jyn is gone!  We have to find her.”

Iella picked herself up slowly and Cassian could tell she was trying to focus on his words, but her brain was still fighting the effects of the tranquilizer. “Right, first, how long have we been out?” she asked in slurred words.

Cassian didn’t think it had been all that long.  The light hadn’t changed and it was still too hot to be comfortable.  At the most it had been two maybe three hours.  He was hoping for less, the longer Jyn had been gone the harder it would be to track her down.  All he had to go on was a vague utterance of the name Q’mel before he had passed out.  The name was ringing a bell somewhere in Cassian’s memory, but he couldn’t place it yet.  “We’ve been here a couple of hours at most,” he said in answer to Iella’s question.

She frowned.  “Can’t have been that long.” She brushed some sand off the bits of tech embedded in her jacket’s cuff and keyed to the chrono feature.  “We were in the cantina for maybe ten minutes, twenty max, before the troopers arrived. We walked with Shekkie for another five before the darts hit us.  Given the current time we were only out for about half an hour.  Long enough for them to grab Erso, but not long enough for us to be completely stripped bare of our possessions.”

“We have to track down the woman who took her.  She didn’t look like a bounty hunter so I have no idea where to start,” Cassian insisted.

“We should start by finding somewhere out of plain view to discuss the best strategy moving forward.”

While Cassian agreed with Iella’s premise, there was something that told him she was not necessarily talking about a strategy for finding Jyn.

“Come on,” she continued, struggling to get to her feet.  “Water and food will help us focus.”

Verticality was more troublesome than Cassian wanted to admit.  He leaned heavily against the wall as he and Iella carefully made their way to a street vendor who was offering meat of dubious origin on a stick.  Cassian negotiated strenuously in his spotty Huttese for the merchant to also provide them with some water.

The two of them found a quiet, out of the way corner between the sand colored buildings where the troopers wouldn’t find them to discuss and plan.

“Cassian, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you sure going after Erso is the wisest course of action?” Iella asked once it was clear she was fully recovered from the tranquilizer’s effects.

“Of course I am!  The Rebellion doesn’t leave people behind.  Not when we don’t have to.”

“An admirable sentiment, and normally I agree with it,” she paused to assess his expression.  Cassian kept his face blank.  “I could be wrong, but I think there’s a larger picture that would be better served if you got back to base and didn’t endanger yourself or anything you may be carrying by attempting a rescue mission.”

That felt like a punch in the gut to Cassian.  It wasn’t that she had guessed that he had a copy of the Death Star plans, Iella was smart and he had said just enough for her to jump to the correct conclusion.  It was that she had a very valid point.  Was one person more important than the survival of the entire cause?  After the action on Scarif, the Empire would be more eager than ever to root out the Rebellion and find their headquarters.  The sooner he got back to Yavin IV the sooner the Alliance could begin to defend itself, maybe even go on the offensive.

But that would mean abandoning Jyn to whatever fate her kidnappers had in store for her.  He wasn’t sure he could do that.  There was a part of his brain that was already trying to rationalize leaving her for a bit and coming back after the plans had been safely delivered.  But what guarantee was there that wherever this Q’mel woman had taken Jyn, she would still be alive and on Tatooine in a few days.  If he was honest with himself, the thought of leaving Jyn and running back to the Rebellion made him sick.  He had put aside moral qualms for the Alliance before, several times over, but this was different.  It was the type of thing he used to do all the time.  The type of action that he had hoped to put behind him when he decided to go to Scarif no matter what the Council decided.  He didn’t want to do what was logical and prudent anymore.  Cassian wanted to do what felt right, and that meant going after Jyn.

Jyn was someone who had built a shell stronger than durasteel around herself over the years, but the events of the last few days – losing Saw Gerrera, watching her father die, losing her newly found crew on Scarif – had started to send cracks through her armor.  He knew without being sure how he had come by such certainty that if he abandoned her now, the strength and fire that made up Jyn Erso would shatter.  He had no doubt that she would pick herself back up again, but she would be different, less _her._   Too many people had shown her that she didn’t matter to them by leaving her behind.  Cassian, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anyone more worth the risk of going back for.  Even if it delayed the plans getting to the Alliance for another day or so.

He looked hard at Iella after his silent few minutes of internal debate.  “She’s worth the risk.  We owe it to her – _I_ owe it to her.  You can go if you want, but I could really use your help.”

She let out a small sigh.  “I thought you might say that.  I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see this from you, Andor, but I suppose it had to happen eventually.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, feeling strangely discomfited.

Iella just shook her head, a small smile pulling the corners of her lips into a slight curve.  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, but now isn’t the time for this.  We need to find out all we can about the woman who has Jyn and where she might have taken her.  You’re right, I don’t think she was a bounty hunter, but that doesn’t really help us much.”

“Right.  The name actually sounded familiar and I think she mentioned Brentaal,” Cassian paused to confirm this with Iella since he had already been fuzzy around the edges by the time the woman in the red dress had shown up.  Iella seemed hesitant, like she too questioned the validity of anything she had heard after she’d been hit with the tranq dart, but eventually she gave him a nod.  “Then I think I have an idea of who took her, but I need access to the HoloNet to double check.  Even then, I don’t understand why she took Jyn, but the where is more important right now.”

They hunted down an establishment that sold Net access by the minute and balked appropriately at the exorbitant fee.  Their limited credits and the knowledge that they still had to buy either a ship or at least passage out of the system meant only Cassian went to work on a data terminal while Iella chose to check other channels.

“Do you know why she called Erso ‘Tanith Something-Or-Other’?  Could this all be a mistake?”

Cassian was tempted to laugh at her question once he found the information he was looking for on Baroness Zahava Q’mel of Serenno.  It wasn’t exactly hidden.  “Oh no, this definitely wasn’t a mistake.  Tanith Pontha was an alias Jyn was smuggling under for a while.  I ran into her on Brentaal under that name and I recognized her as a slicer I had met a year previously whom I thought was actually named Kestrel Dawn.”

“Wow.  What are the odds of that happening?” Iella asked, sounding a bit astounded.

Cassian let a small smile cross his lips.  “Kay would say extremely low.”  Iella looked at him curiously for the comment so he pushed on.  “The point is, the third time I ran into her, Jyn was going by yet another name, had changed her looks, and ditched her ship probably because of some trouble she had with Jabba the Hutt.  She told me yesterday that a smuggling deal with the crime boss had gone south and he ended up putting a bounty on Tanith Pontha.”

Iella’s eyes narrowed as she considered this information.  “Do you think this woman might be working for Jabba, or maybe with him?  What exactly happened on Brentaal?  Some background might help me figure out if there’s someone I can call for some extra enlightenment.”

“I was undercover with the Imperial Navy at the time and needed an out so that I could get the information I was after safely back to the Alliance.  I was surrounded by the enemy and she was someone I recognized and who had helped me before, so I asked her to help me again.”

A skeptical eyebrow met that statement.

“Fine, I coerced her into helping,” Cassian amended.  “Part of our ploy involved Jyn impersonating a wealthy Baroness of Serenno so that we could gain access to the Trade Hall private spaceport.”

“Are you saying Erso was inopportunely abducted because some royal from an Outer Rim planet took offense to being falsely represented to a bunch of Imperials and overblown merchants by a short, pale woman?”  Iella looked incredulous and Cassian couldn’t blame her.  “That is insane!”

“Now that I think about it, the woman’s actual ship may have ended up impounded since Jyn altered the permits for our cover, I don’t recall.  It was a nice ship too, a luxury yacht.  It probably took a while to straighten everything out.”

“Alright, that makes marginally more sense.  I mean no one likes dealing with bureaucracy, but kidnapping a person in the middle of the street in broad daylight is a bit much as far as revenge tactics go, wouldn’t you agree?”

It was a fair point in Cassian’s view, but he had learned over the years that rich people often had more money and time on their hands than they knew what to do with and they did crazy things just because they could.  The entire concept was utterly baffling to Cassian who had known nothing other than a life of bare necessity and hard work, every moment precious and accounted for.

“Absurd, yes it is.  Out of the realm of possibility?  No, I don’t think so,” he told Iella.

Iella seemed to think about this, her eyebrows knitting in concentration.  “Alright.  I’m going to get in touch with Sy and see if she knows anything about what this woman is up to.  If you guys never actually met her in person on Brentaal then she had to get her information from somewhere.  Besides, not much happens on Tatooine without Sy knowing something about it.”

Cassian didn’t have to wait long on the information.  Apparently Q’mel hadn’t been what one might call ‘subtle’ in her hunt for Tanith Pontha. Iella held her comlink out where they could both hear Sy’s report.  It seemed Cassian wasn’t far off the mark about the woman being mad about her ship and starting a manhunt for Jyn as a result.  She had gone from the Core to the Outer Rim asking if anyone recognized the woman in a grainy security holo of a person claiming to be Baroness Zahava Q’mel, but was very clearly not when compared to the real thing. The rest of the footage showed a well-dressed woman drunkenly parading around the private spaceport at the top of Brentaal’s prestigious Trade Hall then waltzing onto a junky old freighter and flying off.  Q’mel had talked to bounty hunters, hired security, even interrogated other smugglers in her efforts to find out who the woman was.

“As far as I can tell she finally got the name Tanith Pontha from a young bounty hunter called Mercurial Swift who also told Q’mel that Pontha wasn’t worth the effort – there’s clearly a story there – so Q’mel did some more digging in the underworld until she made her way to Tatooine and Jabba,” Sy told them.

“And what she’s just been waiting here for Tanith to show up again?” Cassian asked, careful not to let Jyn’s real name slip.  “If she’d had her way, I guarantee you Tanith would never have set foot on this planet again.”

“Nah, I think it has more to do with paid informants and a Class One hyperdrive,” Symar rejoined.

“Which means someone recognized her yesterday,” said Iella.

“Probably one of Jabba’s men that Q’mel outbid,” Cassian muttered to her before raising his voice and asking, “Any chance you have a lead on where she might have taken Tanith?”

There was a pause from the other end.  “You’re lucky I like you Wessiri, if it was anyone else I’d start charging by the sentence.”

“I’ll pay you back, Sy.  You know I’m good for it,” Iella said fiercely.

“Yes, you honest ones are rather good like that.”  A deep sigh came through the comlink and Cassian wanted nothing more than to shake the person on the other end of the comm until they told him where Jyn was.  Instead he just clenched his fists and breathed carefully through his nose. Finally, Sy gave them more information that they could actually use.  “I don’t know everything, but I can tell you that the ship that Q’mel flew in to Tatooine is still docked planetside in Mos Eisley.  And if one of Jabba’s men recognized your girl Pontha, then you can bet that a few others did too.  There’s a good chance that if Q’mel hasn’t left the planet yet, it’s because she got waylaid by Jabba’s people.  The bounty for Pontha isn’t huge, in fact it’s nothing compared to the price that’s going to be on Han Solo’s head in about a week if he doesn’t actually pay the Hutt this time, but still it’s something and credits are credits.”

“Are you saying we’re going to have to break Tanith out of Jabba’s Palace if we want her back?” Iella asked, her voice somewhere between cross and disbelieving.

“I’m saying nothing of the sort,” Symar said primly.  “I’m merely observing that if Pontha were likely to be anywhere on Tatooine, it’s there, under some kind of guard.”

“Lovely.  This is going to be such fun,” Iella deadpanned, then she sighed.  “Thanks again, Sy.  I owe you.”

“Yes you do, and I won’t forget it, trust me.”  The line went dead and Iella stowed her comlink in one of her trouser pockets.

“At least she’s planetside, but I’m not sure being held by a Hutt and a woman out for revenge is much better,” Cassian said.

“I wish we had some back up of some kind if we’re storming the castle,” Iella commented, offhandedly.

Cassian abruptly frowned at the thought.  It actually gave him an idea, it was admittedly not the best idea he’d ever come up with, but it could potentially kill two birds with one stone.  It was about time he checked in with the Imperial troops one last time anyway.  “Wessiri, what do you say we introduce the Empire to Jabba the Hutt?” he offered tentatively.

Cassian watched Iella’s expression carefully as she worked through what he meant and the possible ramifications.  “That’s actually not a bad idea.  It’s risky, and we’ll need to have secured transport before we even set out across the Dune Sea, but it could work.” She eyed him closely, as if looking for weakness.  “And Willix?”

“Willix will do his duty until he’s not needed anymore,” Cassian said with a shrug.  “The original plan will need a bit of adjusting, but the main premise holds.  We just have to get to Jyn before the shooting starts then get out before the smoke clears.”

Iella was nodding now, not quite enthusiastic, but definitely game for the rescue mission.  “You do what you need to do to get the Imps over to Jabba’s Palace.  I’ll head to the monastery and see about getting us a ship.”

“What about your Headhunter?”

“I’m thinking the transaction will have to be more of a trade than an actual, outright, purchase,” Iella said and grimaced.  “The Alliance will just have to live with it.  I scrub all the data every time I land anyway.”

“How long do you think you’ll need to negotiate?”

“At least half an hour, maybe longer depending on what’s available and how hard a bargain they drive.”

“Good,” Cassian said, already thinking ahead.  “That will give me time to get the unit mobilized.  Send me a message when you get to the Palace and we’ll go ahead with the plan.”

“If we get out of this alive, you’re going to explain just how it is that no one in the entire Imperial detachment has caught on to your little charade, considering how often you’re gone,” Iella said shaking her head in disbelief.  “I mean, can’t they trace your comm signal?”

“They could if they had a reason to.  I haven’t given them a reason to look that closely at me.”

“Unbelievable, but irrelevant at the moment.  I’m assuming by ‘the plan’ you mean the charges that I will magically set… where?  I don’t know if I can stealthily penetrate that far into the Palace.”

“That’s fine.  The landing pad should work.  It will be hard enough to get around since there are sure to be guards and it’s the only place I know I’ll definitely be anyway.”

“You won’t be able to actually escort Erso out, you know that right?” Iella gave him a hard look that seemed designed to make him second guess everything.  “And you’ll have to let her in on what we’re doing otherwise things could get ugly.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I have a feeling we’ll all be playing it by ear for the most part.  For example, if there’s a chance that you can cut the power that could help.  It might give Jyn a chance to get herself out,” said Cassian, trying not to let his worry show even as Iella made a face at his suggestion.

Even if he didn’t want to admit it, at the end of the day Iella was right.  Springing a prisoner from Jabba’s dungeons and involving the Empire was a dangerous business, especially since the Empire was still actively looking for the Death Star plans, even if they didn’t know two complete copies currently existed in the galaxy.  If something happened to both him and Jyn then he might be dooming the Rebellion to a fiery death from the Empire’s superweapon.  Iella suspected that he had the plans, but there was no guarantee that she would have the opportunity to grab them off him if he was killed.  If Cassian was captured alive everything would be infinitely worse.

Still, he wasn’t going to back out and abandon Jyn.  Not now, not for anything.

“I’m going to go find the lieutenant and the troops.  Give me a signal when you’re on site and ready.”

“Will do, Captain.”  Iella gave him a mock salute and set out for the Dim-U monastery to acquire them a ship.

Cassian gathered himself and the slightly worse for wear Imperial officer’s tunic that was luckily still with him after he’d woken up from the tranq dart.  He waited to put it and the cap on until he was mostly alone then pulled out his Imperial issue comlink.  The lieutenant and Desert Sands unit commander had kept things in check during his absence, but it seemed they finally had news.

“Captain Willix, sir, we have a possible lead on the droids.  An informant spotted them heading toward the hangar.  Docking bay ninety-four, we think.”

That was troublesome news to Cassian, but he worked around it easily enough.  “Are you certain?  I have solid information that the droids were taken to local crime leader Jabba the Hutt.”

“That does sound plausible,” the lieutenant said, sounding hesitant.

“We’ll check out both leads, we have enough troops it will ensure nothing slips through our fingers.  Send a couple of squads to the docking bay and have another couple of squads meet me back at the transports.  We’re taking a skiff out to the Northern Dune Sea,” Cassian told the Imperial officer.

“Yes, sir! Those droids won’t elude us for much longer."

“Very good, lieutenant.”  Cassian keyed off the comm and hurried toward the hangar that temporarily housed the ships that had brought the stormtroopers and their equipment to Tatooine.  He felt a bit uneasy about the fate of whomever he was sending two squads of troopers after in docking bay 94, especially if it really did involve the droids that had been in the escape pod.  Despite the odds and the Empire’s poor track record in recovering the missing datatapes thus far, Cassian supposed they were bound to come across the information and the droids they were looking for eventually.  All he could do was hope for the best and make sure that he stayed alive and made it back to the Rebellion in one piece.

The hangar was surprisingly quiet for such a bustling spaceport, but Cassian supposed it made a certain kind of sense.  No one on this planet wanted to get noticed by the Empire which meant avoiding the troopers wherever possible.  As promised there were at least three squads waiting for him when he arrived, all of them armed and carrying extra power packs or spare blasters for the occasion.  It shouldn’t have surprised him, efficient troop movements were something the Empire was known for after all, but somehow the precision timing and exact formations, so very different from the realities of the Rebel Alliance, still managed to catch him off guard.

He walked up to them and slid back into the role of Willix for what he hoped would be the last time.  “I have just received intelligence regarding the possible location of the Rebel droids.  We will be investigating a local crime lord, Jabba the Hutt, whose agents may have abducted the droids.  We will not leave his so-called palace until we have conducted a thorough search of the premises.  No one will be permitted to stand in our way, is that understood?”

Cassian’s speech was met with a hearty “Yes, sir!”

“Then let’s move out.  I want these droids located and either captured or destroyed!”

There was a great clattering of movement as the troopers hurried to board two low terrain land skiffs.  Cassian joined them and programmed in the coordinates of Jabba’s Palace which he had acquired from Iella, then stood aside to let a stormtrooper bearing an orange pauldron of command pilot the craft.  About seven minutes into the journey, when they were already well outside the city limits, the unit commander turned to Cassian with an update.  Apparently an old Corellian YT-1300 model freighter had blasted off from the Mos Eisley spaceport without authorization.  Two droids were seen getting on board along with a handful of humans and a Wookiee. 

“The two squads on the scene were engaged in a firefight and were unable to ascertain if they were in fact the droids we are looking for,” the commander finished.

Cassian made sure not to let the glimmer of satisfaction he felt show through at the possibility of Organa’s droids making it offworld and escaping the Empire’s grasp. Instead he responded as an Imperial officer would be expected to respond and silently hoped his words weren’t about to condemn some poor souls to a painful death, especially if they were actually helping the Alliance.  “Inform the _Devastator_ immediately.  They may be able to capture the ship before it jumps out of orbit.  In the meantime we will pursue this other lead to be certain we cover all our bases.”

“Yes, sir,” the commander said, then spoke into his helmet comm to carry out Cassian’s directives.

The remainder of the ride through the desert seemed interminable, although he wasn’t sure if that was due to his nerves and anticipation, the never changing landscape, or if it actually took that long to get to the edge of the Northern Dune Sea.  The fact that he was once again undertaking a poorly planned mission that could have disastrous consequences should it go wrong was always hovering in the back of his mind.  Cassian sincerely hoped that Jyn really was in the Hutt’s Palace, otherwise he will have wasted valuable time on a useless and dangerous task.

Eventually a metallic structure dug into the side of a mountain came into view.  It didn’t look like much, just a round durasteel, slightly monastic looking building that had had gone rusty with age.  He was certain there had been many modifications made to the original structures in terms of technology and internal space.  The rock the Palace was situated on looked solid, but it would have been easy enough for constructor droids to drill away at the bedrock to create cooler underground chambers.  Cassian made a mental note that this place was most likely bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside.  As the skiff drew closer he also noted that there was no obvious outdoor landing platform for ships.  Instead, there was a large dark cave entrance that looked like it could accommodate most light freighters and assumed that there was a subterranean hangar attached to the Palace.  That would undoubtedly make things more difficult for Iella, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Cassian told the stormtrooper commander not to pull all the way into the hangar, but rather to leave the skiff just outside the entrance where they wouldn’t be so easily subjected to sabotage.  He posted a guard of two troopers for each skiff then headed through the hangar with the rest of the unit flanking him, weapons held at the guard position.  No one made an attempt to stop or challenge them, but he did see a long snouted Gamorrean scurry off somewhere, probably to report the sudden Imperial presence.  He wasn’t exactly counting on the element of surprise so he kept up his steady, confident pace, hoping he was getting closer to Jyn with each step.

A large, solid durasteel blastdoor separated the hangar from the rest of the Palace.  There was another set of Gamorrean guards on either side of the dividing door doing their best to look intimidating, but rather failing at it in Cassian’s opinion.  There were no obvious door controls, only a prominent holocam so Cassian stared it down, his expression growing darker and more imperious with every passing moment until whomever was on the other side finally hit the control that raised the blastdoor.

Cassian entered the antechamber with his white armored guard just behind him.  There were a couple of dubious characters milling about who had weapons hanging off them in every conspicuous manner possible and violence written into every line of their faces.  A pale red-eyed Twi’lek dressed in a long black robe with one of his lekku wrapped artfully around his torso bustled forward to meet Cassian.

“ _This sa doe bunko of doe Illustrious Jabba doe Hutt. Doe Empire sa nopa chowbaso unko_ ,” the Twi-lek said in a languid voice, his position in front of Cassian very clearly meant to bar his way.

For perhaps the only time in his memory, Cassian was glad for the Empire’s general anti non-human stance.  It meant that he didn’t have to struggle through a conversation in Huttese which would only have weakened his position both in the eyes of Jabba’s people and in the eyes of the troopers at his back.  He needed the Empire’s might with him until he found Jyn.  He could understand Huttese just fine, but speaking it was another matter.  Despite being able to twist his Basic into whichever planetary accent he wanted, there was something about the way words were formed and pronounced in Huttese that was so at odds with his native Festian that he had never really gotten the hang of it.  At least his cover identity gave him an excuse this time and a strong statement in Basic would show the stormtroopers that he wouldn’t be cowed by Jabba and his reputation.

“I don’t care whose Palace this is and whether or not you approve of our presence.  I’m here on official Imperial business and I will not be turned away until it is complete.  I suggest you take me to Jabba now or I will have my troops level this place and everyone in it until I find what I’m looking for.”  Not an outright lie, he was determined to find Jyn no matter what it cost, so he gave a casual signal to his troops and they raised their blasters in unison to aim at the room’s inhabitants which further backed up his words.

The Twi’lek did a very quick reassessment of the situation now that there were several blasters aimed in his direction and changed his tune regarding their ability to see the Hutt rather abruptly.

“ _Mee will take u tah Jabba ateema_.”

“A wise decision,” Cassian informed the Twi’lek and signaled his men back to their resting guard position.

He and the troopers made their way through the Palace cutting a swathe through the henchmen and hangers-on who lazed about the Palace either strung out on spice or drunk on something that Cassian probably never wanted to pass his lips.  As they neared what had to be the main audience chamber, or perhaps the throne room if this confusing warren of rooms was really being referred to as a Palace, Cassian could hear the rumbles of a loud and partially heated conversation.  The low voice grumbling in Huttese was undoubtedly Jabba, but there was also a forthright, mechanical sounding voice that was providing commentary in Basic, and finally an angry, smooth voice that sounded cultured, yet was missing the telltale signs of a Core accent.  That last voice sounded somewhat familiar which Cassian chose to see that as a good sign.

He entered the main room just behind the Twi’lek with his chin held high and a grim expression on his face.  His eyes immediately swept the room noting threats, weaknesses, avenues of retreat, and most importantly, a short, brunette figure off to the side of the room in dark trousers and a no-frills blue shirt with chains securely fastened around her wrists.  Cassian instantly knew it was Jyn even if she was doing her best to keep her face hidden while she struggled in the grip of her captors.  He was hard pressed not to let out a sigh of relief, but even if Jyn was in view he still had a role to play before he could get both Jyn and himself off this wretched planet.  He wanted nothing more than to be able to look into her eyes right now to make sure that she was unharmed, but he knew that she was just trying to protect her identity from whoever the Imperial party might have been.  Cassian even approved of the small precaution, despite his desire to see those bright gray-green eyes staring back at him at the moment.

The Twi’lek brought Cassian to a stop before he reached the middle of the room, which was already occupied by a tall, dark skinned, regal looking woman in a somewhat rumpled red dress, and hurried toward the dais upon which the massive slug-like body of the Hutt reclined.  Cassian motioned for his troops to fan out across the room, taking up strategic positions while he listened to the end of Baroness Zahava Q’mel’s tirade.

“What _you’re_ not realizing is that even if I wanted the credits, a mere twenty-five thousand wouldn’t even come close to covering the loss I sustained when the Empire confiscated my custom designed and modified Personal Luxury Yacht 3000.  It was my favorite ship!  Do you have any idea how much those things cost?  Try one hundred times what you’re offering me for that,” she pointed vehemently at Jyn who was still trying not to be noticed, but scowling heavily at the floor nonetheless, “dirty, pale, useless, joke of a con artist!  I got her first therefore her life belongs to me.  I demand that you let me be on my way at once with my hard won property!”  Finally the woman stopped her shouting, stared at Jabba in pure indignation, and breathed heavily.  The room appeared to be in a general state of shock in the wake of her demands.  There probably weren’t a lot of people who would dare speak to the Hutt in such a way and live to tell the tale.  Cassian would have been impressed if the “property” in question wasn’t Jyn Erso.

Additionally, it seemed he hadn’t been too far off the mark to assume all this trouble was rooted in the woman’s ridiculous attachment to a spaceship.  Admittedly, confiscated was definitely worse than just temporarily impounded, but it still wasn’t something to kill or enslave someone over.

Fortunately, the Twi’lek used the stunned silence to approach the Hutt crime lord and announce the very obvious arrival of the Imperial contingent.  Cassian felt the large bulbous eyes of Jabba the Hutt land on him and take in the way he and his troops were arrayed throughout the room.  He spoke at last into the near silence, his voice rolling through his Huttese sentences.  Cassian knew what was being said to him, but he waited until the translator droid had finished his embellished version of the Hutt’s words.

“The most glorious Jabba the Hutt will defer negotiations with the Baroness over the possession of the smuggler Tanith Pontha until after he has concluded dealings with the representatives of the Empire.  Captain, you are invited to speak your piece, but you are advised to tread carefully as the Empire is not looked upon favorably by the mighty Desilijic clan.”

Cassian took a few steps forward to occupy the center of the audience chamber that was only reluctantly vacated by Baroness Q’mel and thought carefully about how to proceed.  He needed to buy time since he hadn’t yet received the signal from Iella that she was in position and ready to help cover his and Jyn’s retreat.  At the same time he didn’t want to back himself into a corner and end up completely separated from Jyn when the signal came, that would just make everything more difficult.  So he would indeed tread as carefully as he reasonably could.

“First, be assured that I am not here to interfere with any of your regular operations,” he began in a voice that was somewhere in between that of a bored Imperial and one who was being forced to withstand something foul, making sure to annunciate everything in his crisp Coruscanti accented Basic.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jyn go still and very slowly lift her eyes from the floor to focus her gaze on him.  It was hard to tell from the angle he was at, but her eyes looked like they were narrowed, as if she was trying to figure out what his plan was.  Cassian shot her a brief glance under the guise of sneering at the general milieu surrounding him.  He had been right, Jyn didn’t look surprised or grateful for his presence, merely calculating.  He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, it meant she was still in possession of all her considerable faculties and abilities.  He returned his focus to the conversation at hand.

“I am here because I received intelligence that a droid belonging to the Empire was stolen and brought here.  I wish to have your Palace searched for the missing droid.  When it has been located we will depart your premises with no further trouble.  If you or your people resist I will do what is necessary to reclaim the Empire’s property.”

“All of the droids in his Eminence’s Palace are the property of Jabba himself,” the translator droid informed Cassian when the Hutt was done speaking.  “If you desire to take one then you will pay for it just as anyone else seeking to purchase goods from the Illustrious Jabba the Hutt.”

“The Empire refuses to pay criminals for the return of its rightful property.  You will surrender the droid or you will face the consequences.”

The Hutt didn’t exactly draw back at the threat, but his bulk rippled.  He began speaking again and waved a hand in a placating gesture.  Cassian’s glare intensified as he took in the Hutt’s meaning even before the translator droid could start to relay the disgusting offer that Cassian was being presented with.

“His Magnificence, Jabba the Hutt, does not think there is any need for hostility between the Empire and his organization.  He believes that there are many things he can offer to the Empire aside from droids.”  Cassian watched with a lip curling in disgust as a pair of Weequay guards with thick leathery brown skin and prominent ridges over their eyes escorted a line of scantily clad slave girls of a number of species – Twi’lek, Theelin, Rodian, Falleen – into the the room to stand in front of the crime boss.  “He is happy to supply your men with entertainment, for a proper fee, of course.”

“I am not here for entertainment,” Cassian growled.  “I will warn you one last time to permit us free access to your—”

He was cut off by Jabba who gestured at Jyn while he spoke.  She must have understood enough Huttese to get the idea of what the Hutt was saying because she immediately began to protest.

Cassian attempted to breathe and remain calm so that he could think with a clear head and not ruin the only chance this hastily constructed extraction plan had of working before it even got underway.  He clenched his jaw as the droid summarized Jabba’s new offer.

“His Excellency suggests you might prefer his new human acquisition for your entertainment needs,” the droid said.  Cassian’s hand itched to draw his blaster and shoot the head off the thing, but that wouldn’t really help since the droid was only a translator.  Jabba deserved the blaster bolt.

“She is _not_ yours to sell!” came a shout from the side of the room.  Baroness Q’mel was quickly subdued by several of Jabba’s men as she made an effort to make her stance on the matter of Jyn’s ownership clear.

Jyn, on the other hand, was making her own sentiments known.  “If you think you’re getting me into one of those skimpy get ups, you had better think again,” she said fiercely to Jabba.

The Hutt let out a menacing chuckle at Jyn’s defiance, which was fortunate for Cassian since the deep laugh, echoed by Jabba’s less salubrious henchmen, masked the sound of several clicks coming from his comlink.  Iella was in the Palace and everything was ready.

“ _Cha too ma laya conky, ya neema loka nyan_ ,” the Hutt said to Jyn, still with a hint of laughter in his voice before he pointed at Cassian, “ _chone kava doompa D'emperiolo stoopa tah je refuse_.”

Cassian found it unlikely that Jyn would ever learn respect for the giant slug and it didn’t matter what the Hutt thought of Cassian for refusing his offer of “entertainment”, both of them were leaving shortly and now Cassian was determined to leave as many lifeless bodies in his wake as possible.

“You’re the fool for refusing the Empire,” Cassian said over the hubbub in his coldest voice.  With a clear sense of dramatic timing, Iella cut the power to the Palace and everything went dark.  “Secure the complex!” he ordered the troopers and made straight for Jyn as lances of red particle energy immediately sizzled through the air turning the main audience chamber into a warzone.

 

***

 

As soon as the lights went out, Jyn went on the attack.  She had no idea if this was part of Cassian’s plan, but she wasn’t going to wait for him to sit her down and explain.  The quicker she was free the quicker they could leave.  The sudden eruption of blasterfire at Cassian’s command was a useful distraction, but she wasn’t too happy about being caught in the middle of a shootout with no weapon and barely any cover.  She spun and kicked at her guards, lashing out with the heavy chains around her wrists until everyone in her immediate vicinity had either fallen under her blows or backed away to engage the more deadly Imperial opponents.

Above the tussle Jyn distinctly heard the voice of Baroness Q’mel scream out, “Are you kidding me?”  Apparently her day wasn’t ending up any better than Jyn’s.  For some reason Jyn just couldn’t bring herself to feel bad about that. 

She also noticed at that moment that the dais that Jabba had been reclining on was swiftly moving backwards and a durasteel blastdoor slid across the front of the platform to create a barrier between the Hutt and the danger.  Jyn wasn’t exactly surprised.  At their core, Hutts were cowards.

More or less free of her guards, she began to pick her way around her fallen victims, trying to stay along the fringes of the fight, then someone bowled her over from the side.  The two of them fell to the ground as a bolt of energy cut through the air right where her head had just been.

“Jyn! Are you alright?” Cassian’s voice asked low and urgent in her ear.

“Never better,” she replied, almost meaning it now that she finally got to strike back at her captors and especially now that she had tangible proof that Cassian was there.

Waking up bound, but thankfully not gagged, in the back of a land speeder surrounded by nothing but miles of sand dunes and a grumpy and rumpled looking woman in red had been among the worst experiences of Jyn’s life.  When compared with the rest of the tragedies in her experience, it was a sentiment that really couldn’t put too fine a point on just how much she hated everything on or about Tatooine.  Yet it wasn’t until her head was finally clear of whatever sedative had been used on her and she was actually in Jabba’s Palace being fought over like a piece of meat – which honestly was probably worse than waking up a prisoner in the middle of the Dune Sea because of how utterly demeaning the situation was – that her mind began to wander to Cassian.  She was about eighty-seven percent certain that neither he nor the Wessiri woman had set up her capture since she had a vague recollection of both of them falling to their knees from a tranq dart at about the same time she did.  Her subconscious was quick to point out that those numbers still left room for doubt.

Jyn reminded herself that she trusted Cassian, for better or worse.  But that didn’t necessarily mean he would judge her life to be worth more than the future of the Rebellion, the fate of which he held in his hands in the form of the datacard that contained the Death Star plans.  Sure he had kissed her, but it had been a high stress moment, and maybe it really had just been about gratitude.  She didn’t want to think that, and the look in his eyes had suggested far more than just thanks for a few well-chosen words.  He had told her he was with her all the way, but how far did that really go?  He had seemed so earnest and warm and sure, and that certainty combined with the tingle of his lips on hers had altered Jyn’s entire evaluation of the man.  Under the cold mask and the duty bound efficiency of the consummate spy was someone who felt deeply and steadily, like the buried hot embers of a fire.  Jyn knew she was more like a flame, her passions running hot and quick and sometimes too obvious to be hidden.  As she stood in Jabba’s Palace waiting for other beings to decide her fate, Jyn realized that she and Cassian complemented each other in so many different ways: in temperament, skills, combat abilities, and approaches to life.  They actually made a surprisingly good team, each of them bringing something valuable to the table that the other was lacking. Nevertheless, that didn’t make her a vital part of any plan he might form in her absence that got him offworld and safely back to the Alliance.

Jyn had just about convinced herself that Cassian wasn’t going to show up ergo she had to rescue herself and start looking for any opportunity to break free before she was dragged deeper into Jabba’s Palace, when the whispers about an Imperial delegation had made their way to her side of the room.  She didn’t know whether to feel hopeful that Cassian was actually coming to help her, or resigned to a fate she couldn’t seem to escape.  Hearing Cassian’s voice and seeing his face, masked by cold Imperial indifference though it was, had brought on a surge of relief she wasn’t entirely prepared for.  It had less to do with Cassian coming to the rescue – Jyn was fairly confident she would have been able to save herself given time – and more to do with the knowledge that he was relatively safe and that he had decided Jyn was worth the risk after all.  She even suspected that the feeling of relief and contentment stemmed largely from the fact that for the first time in her life, someone who had promised to stick by her had _actually_ stuck by her, even when it got dangerous.  Cassian had come back for her and that meant more than he’d ever know.

“I’m glad you and your friends could stop by, pretty boy,” Jyn said to Cassian after forcing her mind back into the present moment.  She crawled toward a large overturned chair to use it as cover, Cassian staying close as she moved.

He grinned at the nickname.  “I figured you had things largely under control, but I wanted to lend a hand where I could,” he said and fired a few shots over the top of the chair.

Jyn could only snort at his wry statement of the situation.  It was true something would have happened eventually, but she had no idea what she would have done if he hadn’t provided such a timely distraction.

She held out her still manacled wrists.  “A little help?”

He studied the old fashioned cuffs and chain, a frown pulling the corners of his mouth down.  “There isn’t time to pick the locks.  Here, watch out,” he said and positioned his blaster right over the heavy chain that connected her wrists.  It took two shots to break the chain, the bolts fizzling into the ground at her feet.  The hot energy lanced through the metal around her wrists and Jyn gritted her teeth against the momentary burn.  If they had to fight their way out it would be better to have a full range of motion, even if it meant she’d probably have a new pair of scars on her wrists in the future.

“I assume you have a plan for getting out?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered and pulled a spare blaster from under his tunic with one hand and used the other to return fire at a cluster of thugs that included a Trandoshan, a Rodian, a Nikto, and two humans.  He pressed the blaster into her hands with barely a glance and said, “Get to the hangar and find Wessiri.”

Right.  Iella Wessiri was probably the one who had cut the power.  It made since that she would also be the one to fly the getaway ship.

“What about you?” she asked as she clicked off the safety on the blaster.

Cassian finally turned his full attention on her and offered a miniscule smile.  “I’ll be with you all the way.”  Jyn’s answering smile was just as small as his, her expression dominated by her determination to get out of the Palace alive.  She set off in a half crouch at a quick pace blasting anything in sight that moved.  There wasn’t a lot of cover in the room, but she dodged around people and pillars as best she could.  It helped a bit that she was moving in the opposite direction from the stormtroopers who were attempting to carry out Cassian’s directive to “secure the complex.” She tried to inconspicuously slip behind them, but the troopers who caught sight of her probably assumed she was one of Jabba’s people trying to sneak behind enemy lines and laid down heavy fire in her direction.  Jyn fired back at everyone indiscriminately, being certain to take out anyone who was impeding her retreat.

Not far behind her, Cassian was following his own trajectory through the chamber toward the hangar, but at least the stormtroopers weren’t inclined to shoot at him.  She caught sight of the orange pauldroned commander slinking up to Cassian to relay some information.  Jyn watched as Cassian nodded then saw his mouth form the distinct words “fall back.”  The trooper must have repeated the order into his helmet comm unit because the tide of white armored figures suddenly shifted directions.  Aside from the obvious tactical need for the Imperial troops to retreat – they were outnumbered, out maneuvered, and surprisingly outgunned – Jyn couldn’t understand why Cassian, not Willix, would give such an order.  Having the stormtroopers where they would be keeping an eye on their so-called Captain would only make it more difficult for the Rebels to get away.  And there was no chance that Jyn was leaving without Cassian, his Imperial cover be damned.

Jyn slipped through a hatchway unseen by the two troopers that were defending it for their comrades to safely pass through.  She hid quickly behind a large sandstone pillar and listened to Cassian give orders for the skiffs to be readied for their imminent departure and to call up the heavier transports for a full strike on the Palace.  Jyn honestly couldn’t tell if his desire to do some lasting damage to Jabba’s Palace was still part of his Imperial cover, or if that was pure Cassian taking his revenge where he could get it.  She had seen the look on his face when Jabba had paraded those slave girls in front of him.  The darkness and hatred in his expression when Jyn herself was offered as a prize was nothing short of terrifying and she was grateful that she wasn’t the person on the receiving end of that glare.  She believed him perfectly capable of using his Imperial connections to call in an airstrike.  Jyn just hoped the two of them would be on a transport flying away from the Palace before it happened.

The brief respite they had gained from leaving the main audience chamber ended all too quickly for Jyn.  Even as the last two stormtroopers struggled through the open doorway several of Jabba’s henchmen followed hot on their heels.  The doorway wasn’t narrow enough to allow only one person through at a time, so the bottleneck Jyn was hoping for didn’t work out as she pictured.  Of course, the ideal situation had Jabba’s people and the stormtroopers taking each other out, leaving Jyn and Cassian free to disappear out the back, so perhaps a bottleneck wasn’t what was needed here.

Jyn managed to catch Cassian’s eye and motioned back toward the currently closed hanger bay door then shrugged questioningly at the open floor space, which held nothing that could act as cover from the crisscrossing blaster bolts, and raised one eyebrow to emphasize her point.  He took the hint and moved to position himself between her and the stormtroopers then relied on their poor peripheral vision to help keep her unnoticed.

Luckily, the empty space of the antechamber was small and one of the troopers had hotwired open the blastdoor leading to the hangar bay after only a few minutes.  The situation in the hangar, however, was another story entirely.  There were already parties exchanging shots and Jyn could see the fallen body of a stormtrooper in the mouth of the cave entrance.  She hurried across the threshold next to Cassian and immediately dove for cover behind a conveniently placed cargo hauler as several enemy blasters were turned on the group coming through the doorway.  Apparently some of Jabba’s people had circled around to the cave entrance to the hangar on the outside of the Palace and had already engaged the stormtrooper guard Cassian had left behind.

Jyn noted between shots that there were several ships docked in the bay, but she had no clue which one belonged to Iella nor was the blonde Rebel anywhere to be seen.  She assumed that Cassian wouldn’t have made his move without being certain that his backup was in place, but maybe she hadn’t made it back from wherever she’d had to go to cut the power to the Palace.  It wasn’t until she had fully assessed the situation that Jyn realized Cassian was no longer beside her.  In fact, she could almost recall him moving in the opposite direction to seek cover as soon as they had come under fire in the hangar.  She scanned the room in brief snatches, only poking her head around the side of the hauler for mere moments in an effort to locate him.  She hated to admit it, but she was a little lost at the moment.  Cassian’s only directive had been to find Iella, but that was proving unfruitful and she wasn’t about to just hole up behind a cargo transport until help arrived. 

An odd flash of movement diagonally across the hangar from where Jyn was crouched caught her eye.  It was a person, torso nearly completely covered in voluminous green fabric, making hand signals at… someone.  Jyn couldn’t spot the intended recipient before she was forced to duck back out of the way and return fire at a particularly nasty looking Togorian.  Yet, even the heat of battle couldn’t shake the feeling Jyn had that those hand signals were significant and she just wasn’t making an important connection between the situation and her surroundings. 

She looked for Cassian one more time and spotted him making a dash for a large cargo crate.  Clearly he was fighting on the other side of the room and was therefore no help to Jyn at all.

Something only a few meters from Jyn suddenly exploded with a violence that caused her to duck away from the fiery mass of burning cargo hauler and seek shelter elsewhere.  Either someone had hit a fuel line, or someone had brought grenades to the fight, which were clearly the perfect weapon for such a tight space packed with ships loaded with combustible fuel.  Jyn really didn’t think much of the intelligence of Jabba’s people.  They were just as likely to get themselves killed as everyone else.

Risking the open air in favor of a better vantage point and safer cover, Jyn ran, blaster firing all the way, to huddle behind the extruding cockpit of the nearest ship, a XS stock light freighter.  The new position allowed her to observe more of the hangar, including the top of Cassian’s Imperial officer’s cap just peeking out above his crate. Jyn frowned in his general direction.  His position wasn’t great, and he should have been using the chaos to get to whichever ship Iella had brought instead of hunkering down.

Jyn’s frown deepened as she noticed something blinking in her field of vision.  Actually, there were several blinking somethings spread all around the hangar.  She realized what they were just as the first charge blew – the one that was stuck to an inconspicuous corner of the cargo crate Cassian had been using for cover.

“No!” Jyn shouted, her voice lost in the riot of explosions that quickly followed the first.  She involuntarily hit the floor as the controlled detonations rocked through the subterranean hangar.  She ended up behind one of the freighter’s landing struts, her hand throbbing painfully where her burned palm had scraped against the ground.  Her head spiked with pain where it had unexpectedly met with the gritty stone floor.  Jyn struggled to look up and crawl away from a burning hot scrap of metal that had landed near her side in the aftermath of a detonation that had gone off not more than three meters from her.  In fact, most of the action throughout the entire hangar bay had ceased.  She was not the only one lying dazed on the ground.  There were definitely more than a few people who wouldn’t be getting up again.

Including Cassian.

Jyn threw caution to the wind and pulled herself forward on her hands and knees, ignoring the pain, and made her way to the half burnt figure in a barely recognizable officer’s tunic.  The air smelled of some combination of burnt flesh and ozone.  A scent Jyn was all too familiar with.  She balked as she got closer to the ruined body.  The face and upper torso were damaged beyond recognition.  Only the lanky frame and the remnants of an Imperial uniform made it obvious to Jyn that the fallen man was Cassian. 

He had survived Jedha and Scarif, he had survived the worst the Empire could throw at him, only to be taken down by some thugs in an attempt to extract her from Jabba’s clutches.

Jyn was going to burn this planet to the ground, starting right there in the Northern Dune Sea.

Jaw clenched against the scream she wanted to release into the too still air of the hangar, Jyn turned and aimed the blaster still firmly in her grasp at the nearest person.  She didn’t care if it was one of Jabba’s or a stormtrooper, everyone was guilty in her eyes. 

She never got to pull the trigger though.  Someone tackled her from behind and wrestled the blaster away from her startled fingers.

“Erso, leave it.  Let’s go!” a firm voice said quietly in her ear.

Jyn fought against the arm trying to pull her to her feet.  “No!” she growled at whoever was trying to get her to just leave Cassian lying on the floor.

“We don’t have time for this!”  The arm tugged again, harder this time.  “Get up, Erso, we have to go.”

Jyn reluctantly let herself be dragged to her feet and finally looked up at the owner of the hand that was tightly grasping her upper arm.  It was Iella Wessiri, wrapped up in her dark green cowl, all of her blond hair hidden.  The sight of her brought back the hand signals Jyn had seen before the explosion and a feeling she couldn’t name prickled down her spine.  Fear?  Intuition? Dread? Hope?  Feelings had little meaning to her at the moment.

“Trust me,” Iella told her and pulled Jyn by her elbow through the hangar, which was slowly coming back to life.  Tall Weequays stirring, humans groaning, troopers struggling to maneuver in their bulky armor.

“But Cassian…” Jyn tried.

“Quiet.  Come on!” Iella urged, walking a bit faster.

Jyn couldn’t quite believe this was happening.  How many more people that she cared about was she expected to watch die and still retain her sanity?  Every person who had ever meant anything to her, who had had a lasting effect on her life, was now dead.  Her mother and father, her surrogate father Saw Gerrera, her newfound crewmates Bodhi, Baze, and Chirrut, hell, even her enemy Krennic had all left Jyn to ponder her luckless existence in this universe alone.  And now Cassian had gone too.

A chance meeting with a Rebel in the Outer Rim all those years ago had led Jyn to change her career path in the wake of Saw’s abandonment, and it had ultimately brought her and the only person left in the galaxy that she trusted back to this desolate dustbowl of a planet.  Perhaps it was some kind of cosmic lesson in justice.  The universe seemed to be telling her that one grand act of selflessness and heroism, no matter how dangerous, was not enough to balance out the selfish life she had chosen to lead when she had been left behind at the age of sixteen.  The thought of how things might have been different if she had accepted Cassian’s offer to join the Rebellion back on Toprawa was almost enough to bring her to her knees again.  So many of the people she had lost in the last few days could have still been alive if only she had raised her head enough to see beyond her own troubles.  Cassian wouldn’t have died with people believing he was just another cog in the Imperial war machine, even if he had been doing all he could to throw a spanner into that very machine.

It was too much to think about.  Jyn did her best to shove everything back into the dark cave at the back of her mind, but all the images in her head seemed too big to fit.  She barely noticed Iella guiding her with not so subtle pressure on her arm to an already gently humming ship.  It was a sleek design, some part of Jyn’s mind that was still functioning on autopilot noted that it was definitely a Nubian J-type spacecraft, but a very old one that predated the Clone Wars by a couple of decades, at least.  It was completely out of place among all the clunky, worn down freighters docked in the Palace hangar.  Iella marched her onboard, practically at a jog as activity around them was becoming unmistakably hostile again.

“I’ve got her!  Take us out!  Faster is better!” Iella shouted toward the cockpit – which made no sense to Jyn since there was no one else to fly the ship – even as she ditched Jyn in the corridor just beyond the swiftly closing hatch.  Unprepared for the sudden acceleration that had the ship rocketing away from Jabba’s palace at a gratifying speed, Jyn stumbled back into a bulkhead and ended up gripping at the cold durasteel to help keep herself upright.  She thought about just giving up and collapsing right there, but there were voices just audible from the direction of the cockpit and Jyn couldn’t help but wonder who Iella had conscripted for the rescue mission.  Leaning heavily on the wall in her exhaustion, Jyn limped her way toward the front of the ship, her ears straining to pick out words.

“No, no, not yet!  Stay low until we get far enough around the planet.  It confuses their tracking from orbit.”

“You want to use the planet as a shield from the Destroyers.”  That was Iella, but the other voice confounded her.

“It’s the best chance we have of getting out unnoticed.”

“Aside from whoever’s coming after us you mean.  Plus, it’ll put us out in the opposite direction of Yavin Four.”

“It’s the safest option.  We can deal with an extra jump and a few more hours onboard.”

“More than a few.  This thing only has a class two hyperdrive.  Best I could negotiate for with limited funds.”

Jyn couldn’t hold her silence anymore.  She had made it to the threshold of the small cockpit and was staring unreservedly at the dark brown, slightly too long hair on the back of a man’s head.  A man who had an unmistakable accent, and unforgettable warm brown eyes that suddenly turned to her when she let out a gasp of surprise.

“How…?” Jyn couldn’t even finish her sentence.  She was stunned and utterly confused.  There was no possible way that Cassian could be sitting in this cockpit, whole and alive, white shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.  The only new visible wound on him were scorch marks on his shirt that indicated a near miss or a graze on his side.  His appearance was at complete odds with the distinct fact that she had seen him get blown up less than ten minutes ago.  She stared at him and tried to understand, but her overwrought brain came up with nothing.

She didn’t even realize her legs had given out on her until Cassian had an arm around her waist to help ease her gently to the floor.  His gaze on her was full of concern and worry.

“Jyn?  Are you hurt?” he asked from his position kneeling in front of her.

“I don’t understand,” she told him.  “I saw you.  Your face was… gone, but it was you.  Dead.”

From the copilot’s seat Iella sighed in an exasperated manner then remonstrated, “Cassian, I told you this would happen.”  Jyn mostly ignored her for the moment.  All her attention was focused on Cassian.

“It wasn’t me,” he rushed to assure Jyn after a hasty glare in Iella’s direction.  “I’m sorry.  There wasn’t time to tell you with all the shooting, but Iella helped me set it up.  Willix had to die so that the Empire wouldn’t be suspicious and try to track me by my comm signal or some other method.”

Jyn just stared at him, taking in his slightly flushed, very alive face, while she processed his words.  “Oh,” she said and watched the worry lines smooth off his face.  She studied him for just a moment more, then promptly slapped him across the face, the split chain still hanging from the manacle around her wrist flicked up with the momentum of her swing and struck Cassian in the chin.

He looked a bit surprised, but honestly, how dare he do that to her?  The stress of the last few days was difficult enough to deal with and the emotional rollercoaster he had just put her through left her completely drained and unable to articulate the strange combination of happiness and anger that currently consumed her.

“Never again,” she growled at him, hoping her expression conveyed at least some of her displeasure with how things had transpired.  “Not after everything.  Never again.”  She emphasized the last point by shoving her finger hard into his perfectly intact chest, aside from the old blaster wound from Krennic, of course. 

He grabbed her hand in one of his own and held it against his safely beating heart while he pulled her head toward his and let their foreheads rest together.  It was a strangely intimate gesture coming from Cassian, but it helped Jyn to calm down and to know that she hadn’t been left behind yet again.

“Never again, Jyn,” he said into the quiet space between them.  “I promise.”

She finally let go of all the tension she was carrying in one heavy sigh.  Jyn didn’t have a lot of experience with good, let alone close, interpersonal relationships, but she somehow knew that Cassian’s promise was about more than just not keeping important information from her in the future.  She didn’t know the full extent of his promise, or even what she wanted it to represent, but for now it was enough to know that he planned to stay by her side for a while at the very least.  She never realized until that moment how relieving it was to find someone who she could rely on long term.  Maybe she didn’t have to do everything on her own anymore.

Jyn felt Cassian move his head then was surprised by the sensation of his lips pressing against her brow.  She met his gaze, unsure of what to say, but hoping that he somehow knew how grateful she was for his dependable presence in her life.

“I’m sorry to break up this touching reunion,” Iella said, sounding both repentant and slightly annoyed, “but we’re about to break atmo and we need to hit lightspeed as soon as possible to avoid detection by the Destroyer.  Do you have coordinates in mind, Cassian, or are we just going to wing it?”

Cassian gave a gentle squeeze to the back of Jyn’s neck and looked her in the eye to be sure she was alright before he stood up to reclaim the pilot’s console.

“I didn’t have anywhere in mind, I just want to keep the planet between us and the Empire, but we need coordinates to feed the navi-computer.  What’s in that direction?” he asked as he scrolled through a star map on his readout display.

Jyn thought quickly, the sudden urgency of the situation clearing out the jumble of thoughts that had previously occupied her.  She pictured a map of the galaxy in her mind as best as she was able.  Her days as a smuggler had sent her to nearly every corner of known space, from the fringes of Wild Space to the Core, and from one end of the Outer Rim to the other, so she had a decent mental image of the various sectors that divided up the galaxy and a few of the planets that belonged to each.  Not to mention she definitely knew exactly where all the major hyperlanes were, plus a few others that were a little less official, yet still well known in certain communities.

“The Kathol Sector,” she blurted into the middle of Cassian and Iella’s conversation about possible vectors for escape.  They turned to look at her.  Jyn shrugged.  “Cassian mentioned it the other day, and it’s relatively close to this end of the galaxy.  I suppose you wouldn’t have to go all the way if you don’t want to, but it would give us easy access to the Rimma Trade Route.  We’re on a clean ship, right?  The major hyperlanes might be more heavily patrolled by Imperial ships, but they have no reason to flag us.  It will at least get us halfway across the galaxy, into the Expansion Region and you can more easily plot a route from there if you’re worried.”

Cassian started nodding his head slowly in assent, his eyes slightly glazed over as he pictured his own mental map of the stars.  “That’s actually not a bad idea,” he said then looked over at Iella for approval.

Iella pursed her lips in consideration.  “It’s risky, but it does have the benefit of gaining us back a few hours if we can use an established hyperspace corridor.  Let’s do it.”

Cassian entered the coordinates and the navi-computer went to work.  Fortunately the short jump was relatively free of obstacles and it didn’t take long to get the necessary data from the computer.  Not even a full minute after they had entered Tatooine’s low orbit, their old Nubian ship shot off into hyperspace, without so much as a hint of Imperial, nor criminal pursuit.

As soon as the comforting stretch of stars blurred the view in the forward viewport they all visibly relaxed a bit.  Not completely, there was still the possibility of danger, but it was less immediate for the time being.

Cassian looked over his shoulder at Jyn and took in her tired and wrung out state.  “You know there’s probably a cot in the back somewhere.  You look like you could use some rest.”

It was an enticing offer, but there were some things that had to be cleared up before she would be able to fully process everything that had happened in the last thirty-six to forty-eight hours.

“First, you tell me how you did it.  I saw you behind that cargo crate when the charge went off, but obviously it wasn’t you.  So how and when did you make the switch?”

“Iella, I think you’d better handle this,” Cassian said, looking a bit curious himself.

“It wasn’t anything special.  I put a remote disruption device on the power grid before I even brought the ship into the hangar so that I could cut the power when everything was ready without having to worry about getting around the Imps.”

Jyn must have looked impressed because Iella shrugged with a small smile on her face and said, “I talked Abbot Drayk into throwing the remote device in with the ship after I found out a little more about the layout of Jabba’s Palace and when it became clear he wouldn’t budge on his price anymore.”

“Nicely done,” Jyn complimented.  “But what I really want to know is where you got the body.”

“He was one of Jabba’s men.  I was in the hangar well before the shooting started.  I casually strolled through the hangar setting a few charges as Cassian and I had previously talked about, while a couple of stormtroopers searched the ship and the other two watched me.  Thanks for that, by the way,” she threw towards Cassian in the pilot’s seat.  He shrugged unapologetically.  “When everything was sufficiently prepared, I triggered the remote disrupter,” Iella continued.  “The Imps forgot about me once the shooting in the main chamber started and they began hearing chatter over their helmet comms.  Some of Jabba’s henchmen must have circled around the outside to come at the hangar from the cave entrance.  One of them sniped a trooper and the others immediately went on the defensive.  When the fighting actually moved into the bay, I took out one of the humans who looked about Cassian’s build.  It was a little difficult to move him where I wanted him without getting noticed, but by that time the crossfire was so heavy and everything was so chaotic that no one really paid any attention to me.  I stripped him of superfluous armor and weapons, signaled Cassian, and…”  She trailed off turning to Cassian to finish the story.

“I joined her behind the crate she was using as cover,” Cassian said, picking up where Iella had stopped, “I put the uniform, cap, and my Imperial issued comlink on the other guy and bolted for the only ship that hadn’t been in the hangar when I first arrived.  Iella covered me and said she’d get to you since I couldn’t be seen and we knew you had no clue which ship was ours.  Maybe it wasn’t the most elegant of plans, but it was effective enough,” Cassian finished.

Jyn thought about his narrative and fit it into the version of the hangar shootout that she had seen.  It was obvious now that the mechanics of the deception had been explained, and honestly, if there hadn’t been so much happening and threats from every angle, she was pretty sure everyone would have noticed Cassian suddenly out of uniform and dashing away.  Still she would have liked to have known ahead of time.

“It was a big move to, ah,” Jyn paused to carefully choose her words, “retire Willix like that.”  It was a valid concern.  Cassian had gained a lot of valuable information as Captain Willix of the Imperial Navy and disposing of him completely cut off an entire source of intelligence for the Rebellion.

“It was time,” he said firmly.  “Almost everyone important aboard the _Devastator_ was suspicious of me anyway.  There was no conceivable way I could disappear from service twice without them being alerted to something highly unusual going on.  Besides, I was serious about never wanting to put on an Imperial uniform again.  Draven can talk himself hoarse trying to convince me, it won’t happen.”

That actually put a smile on Jyn’s face.  For all his loyalty and dedication to the Alliance, Cassian was actually going to draw a line somewhere.  Jyn even liked to think that she had something to do with that decision; all her rule flouting had to have rubbed off on him a little.

“It was a pretty convincing death scene, so I don’t think your Imperial friends will be looking for you anytime soon,” she assured him.  Now that everything was explained Jyn was feeling more tired than she’d like to admit after having slept for twelve hours the night before plus the forced rest from the sedative.  The complete turn in emotions had really taken it out of her.  “Let me know when we’re about to drop out of hyperspace.”

Cassian held her gaze for just a few moments more then gave her a nod before turning back to the console in front of him and picking up a headset.  Iella just nodded absently, her attention already focused on plotting a safe course back to the Rebel base from the Kathol Sector. 

Jyn turned away from the cockpit and wandered through the ship thinking about everything that had happened since she had left Wobani and simultaneously taking in the amenities to be found on an old Nubian Cruiser.  It wasn’t much.  Just a small cabin with a decent enough looking cot, a refresher, a maintenance bay that looked like it had been retrofitted with smuggling compartments where a bank of astromech units would have been housed originally, and a small galley space that contained one lonely packet of insta-caf.  Jyn wasn’t desperate enough for anything quite so unpleasant, so she wandered back out with half a mind to find something that would allow her to pick the locks on the manacles around her wrists.  The metal was starting to chaff at the light burns she had sustained when Cassian had blasted the chain apart.

Once she found a useful looking tool that was nothing more than a long thin bit of metal, Jyn settled not in the cabin in the aft of the ship, but in a corridor just off the cockpit.  She settled on the floor just within hearing range of Cassian and Iella in the cockpit, knees drawn up and her back against a wall.  They didn’t speak much, but the occasional sound of their voices double checking coordinates, or trading decrypt codes was somehow soothing.  She worked at the locks on her wrists and tried to let her mind go blank as the sound of the Rebels’ voices washed over her.  Jyn may have become accustomed to a solitary life in the last five years of her existence, but thinking about everyone she had lost in the last few days had the odd effect of making her want to be around people that she knew and had a connection to.  The difference between forcing herself to believe she was alone in the universe and actually knowing that she had no family left, blood or otherwise, was surprising to say the least.  She knew she had a decision to make regarding her future and only the time it took to get back to the Rebel base to make it, otherwise everything would get too complicated.

She was so lost in a fog between not thinking at all and thinking about things that weighed too heavily on her, that she didn’t hear the proximity alert that announced their imminent reversion to realspace, nor did she notice Cassian’s approach until she saw his boots stop right in front of her.  She tilted her head all the way back to look up at him.  The expression on his face wasn’t exactly his normal blank spy face, but it wasn’t terribly easy to read either.  If she had to guess, Jyn would say he was puzzled, or maybe apprehensive.

“We’re coming up on Kal’Shebbol in the Kathol Sector.  You said you wanted to know.”

Jyn carefully got to her feet, her body stiff from sitting in the same position for well over four hours.

“Were you out here the whole time?” Cassian asked.  Jyn just nodded her confirmation.  His eyes shifted and Jyn instantly knew something was wrong.  “Did you hear what we were discussing before the proximity alert went off?” he asked tentatively.

That threw her for a second, but Cassian wouldn’t be worried about a random overheard conversation between himself and Iella, this had to be something more.

“What is it?” She demanded.

Cassian indicated that she should follow him so she took up a position behind his seat in the cockpit and looked for any indication of trouble.  Nothing but the millions of pinpricks of light from distant stars and the vast green and brown curving surface of a planet was visible in the viewport.  Still, even Iella looked worried and that immediately made Jyn alert and slightly nervous.  “I still don’t see what has you both so concerned.”

“Well you wouldn’t,” Iella began.  “It’s some stray comm chatter that we picked up while we were scanning to make sure the Empire wasn’t tracking us.”  She stopped there and looked unsure how to proceed.

Cassian stepped in when the silence stretched on long enough to make Jyn frustrated.  “It’s Alderaan,” he said, his face grim.  “It’s gone completely dark.”

Jyn blinked and looked from Cassian to Iella and back again.  “What do you mean by ‘dark’?”

“All communications in and out cut off abruptly an hour or two ago.  There are no signals of any kind coming from Alderaan right now.  No radio, comm relays, HoloNet, vid-transmissions, nothing.  All of it just stopped.  It’s hard to tell the exact timing all the way out here since we’re far enough from the Core that transmissions from that region are slightly delayed by the time they get here.”

Jyn swallowed thickly.  There wasn’t much that could shut down an entire planet like that, especially not such a high profile world as Alderaan.  It would take an entire fleet of Imperial Star Destroyers all equipped with ion cannons in a coordinated, planetwide orbital bombardment to completely shut down anything that would register on a sensor reading from space.  Even then, the effects of an ion burst weren’t always permanent.  A few hours and a few toggled fuse switches and everything should be able to be brought back on line.  But why would the Empire bother to do something like that?  It would serve no purpose.

That left only one other logical option for why Alderaan had gone dark.  It was an option Jyn didn’t even want to consider.

She looked directly at Cassian.  His expression seemed to echo the worst of her thoughts.  “They wouldn’t dare,” she said, trying to deny what the evidence was telling her.  “Not Alderaan.  It’s too politically significant.  Even as a scare tactic, it’s too bold.  The Senate would revolt, for whatever that’s worth these days.”

“There is no Senate anymore,” Iella said softly.

“What are you talking about?” asked Jyn in confusion.

“Emperor Palpatine released a new Imperial Decree announcing the dissolution of the Senate and instilling the sector governors and moffs with new powers and direct control of their regions.”

“Without a Senate to keep appeased, and only a moff council that cares more about power than people, the Empire could make an example of Alderaan,” Cassian concluded with a grimace.  “Even if Bail Organa and Alderaan _appeared_ to toe the Imperial line, they were big supporters and a main source of funding for the Rebellion.  There’s no way that ISB or someone high in the diplomatic ranks didn’t know that, even if they couldn’t prove it officially.”

“So they destroyed the entire planet.”  Jyn’s voice came out strangled as visions of the destruction on Jedha and the roiling wave of energy that engulfed Scarif filled her mind.  “An entire Core world populated by billions of people may never be inhabitable again.”

“After what Cassian’s told me, that’s the most logical explanation,” Iella supplied.

Her father’s work had killed billions of people.  Jyn couldn’t stand it anymore.  “We have to destroy it!  We have to!” She said, her eyes blazing with determination.  “How long until we get back to Yavin Four?”

“In this thing?  Fifteen to twenty hours if we’re lucky.  I’ll have a better estimate once we stop in the Expansion Region to realign for the final jump,” Iella said with a glance at her console.

That felt like far too long of a time to Jyn.  Something in her knew that between Scarif and losing the Rebel droids with precious information on Tatooine, the Empire was hunting down the Rebellion headquarters with renewed vigor.  They had to get back with the Death Star plans before it was too late.  Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about the time it took to travel three quarters of the length of the galaxy, especially when their ship only had a class two hyperdrive.

She looked Cassian in the eye and knew he felt just as anxious as she did about the situation and just as helpless to change it. 

“We’ll just have to get back to base as fast as we can and hope that the Empire doesn’t decide to make an example out of every other planet that is suspected of supporting the Alliance,” Jyn decided firmly. 

Both of her companions showed their immediate agreement by resuming their piloting duties.  Iella was steely eyed and absolutely brimming with tension as she turned to flip a few switches on the console while Cassian punched buttons with a little more vehemence than was strictly necessary to prime the hyperdrive generator for their jump.  If Jyn had to guess, she’d say the Corellian woman knew a few Alderaanians and was curious to get official news of what had happened to the planet, and Cassian was worried about what might happen to the Rebellion that was his home.

For her part, Jyn was horrified by what had been done with the superweapon that most of the galaxy would see as the brilliant Galen Erso’s legacy.  Jyn knew better.  After years of despising the man, she had finally been made to realize that he had done what he thought was best, and that his true legacy was the hidden flaw deep within the belly of the Death Star, a dagger poised to strike at the heart of the Empire that had destroyed his life and his family.  Jyn silently reiterated her promise to her father that she would do all that was in her power to destroy the Empire’s ultimate weapon.

The ride back to Yavin IV was going to be long and tense, with all three of them too anxious to sleep and all of them clearly wishing that their ship was faster than it was.

 

***

 

Cassian had never experienced a more arduous or draining seventeen hours of hyperspace travel in his life.  He was exhausted and worried and there was even a slight bit of confusion regarding Jyn thrown into the mix.  At this point he was pretty much running on just four hours of sleep in the last three days which was wreaking havoc on his usually calm and clear thought processes. 

By the time they arrived in the Kathol Sector and had been flying sedately through the space around Kal’Shebbol without any sign of a pursuing Star Destroyer or even an Imperial light cruiser or corvette, Cassian was pretty certain that they had made a clean getaway from Tatooine.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t still on the lookout for trouble though.  He hadn’t lived this long in the Intelligence business without developing a few healthy paranoias where the Empire was concerned.  But it was that constant need to check over his shoulder, so to speak, to see if they were being followed that was eating up the last reserves of his energy.

The news about Alderaan had hit him harder than he expected.  The transmissions they had intercepted once they were in the Expansion Region surrounded by the emptiness of space, had confirmed that the once glittering Core world was completely destroyed.  The occasional ship that had flown into the system was greeted with an unlisted meteor cluster and several threatening Imperial capital ships.  It was worse than Jedha and Scarif.  This time there was nothing left that could be reclaimed decades down the line.

Cassian didn’t know how to fully process the information.  Yes, the loss of billions of lives was an unspeakable act, but it was on such a vast scale that it was hard for just one person to really get a grasp on.  Yet the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Alderaan was an integral part of the Rebel Alliance and he did, in fact, know several Alderaanians who were suddenly without a homeworld.  Bail Organa, Viceroy of Alderaan, was someone Cassian knew personally and even counted as a friend after the man had spent several hours coaching Cassian on his Alderaanian accent a few years ago.  As a leader of the Council it was possible that Organa had still been on Yavin IV when the Empire had unleashed the full power of the Death Star, but he was a prominent figure and couldn’t afford to spend that much time lurking where he didn’t want to be officially noticed.  It was probable that the Alliance had just lost one of its founding members, and if what he had heard was true, one of the people who had been there at the very beginning of the Fulcrum network Cassian had operated with when he was working recruitment in the Albarrio sector.  It was hard for Cassian to believe that such an active voice against the atrocities and tyranny of the Empire was gone.  In an effort to stop his spiraling thoughts he determined not to jump to conclusions, but to wait for official information from the Alliance instead.

Being so unsure of his own reaction to the news, he didn’t know what to say to Iella, let alone to Jyn who had to be looking at the destruction of an entire planet from a completely different perspective considering her father was responsible for creating the weapon that had allowed such a thing to happen.  He didn’t know what to say to her about anything.  She had looked so shattered when she had thought he was dead and the relief he saw on her face when she saw that he was actually alive was nothing short of surprising.  He certainly had come to care for her in a way he didn’t think he would ever care about anyone – Iella had been right about that, even if he didn’t want to admit it at the time – but he hadn’t known for sure until that moment that he meant something to her too.  It was gratifying and terrifying at the same time, so, naturally, he decided not to address it other than to make sure she knew that he was alive and he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  Even the way she had chosen to settle where she could still hear him and Iella talking in the cockpit on the way to Kal’Shebbol was something he wouldn’t have expected from Kestrel, Tanith, or Liana, but he was strangely touched by when it came from Jyn.  He knew what it felt like to just want to be around people, without having to actually interact with them.  He understood the comfort it provided to simply know that you weren’t alone all the time.

Cassian wanted to tell her that she never had to be alone again if that’s what she wanted, but he didn’t know how she would take that statement from him.  She had rebuffed his offers to join the Rebellion in the past, so why would this be any different?  Cassian didn’t know how to respond to the part of his brain that pointed out that if the offer was to stay with _him_ and not the Rebellion in general her answer might be different.

It all added up to a sense of confusion about how to approach Jyn about anything during the long flight, so he just stayed quiet and watched her.  It didn’t escape his notice that she was watching him in return and Iella was watching them both with an occasional smirk.

Everything got worse when they were a little over an hour out, and Cassian couldn’t raise the base on any frequency.  The signal was registering according to his comm array, but no one was answering.  Cassian frowned at the comm unit and didn’t know what to make of it.  The fact that they were at least getting a signal meant the base had to still be there, right?  The lack of response was troubling since he knew there was always a signals officer or three on duty.  Maybe the Empire had launched a ground assault on the Massassi Temple that housed the Rebel headquarters. Maybe something else equally as horrible had happened.  Both Iella and Jyn were similarly concerned and had no better explanation than him.

All three of them were hovering in the cockpit when the proximity alert went off telling them that they’d be arriving at Yavin IV in a minute or so and all three of them jumped at the sudden chirping alarm. 

“Finally,” Jyn muttered from her spot on the ground of the hatchway and then stood up to stretch out her limbs.

Iella too looked relieved to be getting some first hand, concrete information in the very near future.

Cassian was still worried.  Seventeen hours was a long time, and the Empire had ships stationed throughout the galaxy that would have taken far less time to get to the Yavin system if they had suddenly found the Rebel base.  Maybe that’s why they had gone quiet.  He didn’t know what they would find when they dropped out of hyperspace, but he was ready to put all the waiting to an end.

“Shields up.  I don’t want anything to catch us by surprise.  Jyn, if you’re staying in here, brace yourself for possible impact,” Cassian instructed.  All of them were on high alert, all exhaustion momentarily forgotten.  “Cutting in the sublights, now,” he said and slid a lever down with one hand as he punched a glowing button with the other.

It was a good thing he had ordered the shields be raised because as soon as the giant red mass of the gas planet Yavin materialized they were immediately struck, causing the whole ship to buck.

“Wait, what?” Jyn bit out in confusion.

Cassian saw what she meant, it wasn’t a laser blast that hit them, it was a stray chunk of metal and it wasn’t the only debris floating in space.  He quickly took control of the ship and tried to guide it as best as he could through the dangerous cloud of metal.

“What is this even from?  There’s too much for it to be just one ship, but the entire Rebel Fleet doesn’t have enough firepower to completely slag something bigger than a corvette or a gunship,” Iella commented.

“I don’t know,” Cassian said tensely.  “See if you can raise Base One.”

“I’ve been trying.  There’s still no response.”

Behind him, Jyn cursed.

Fortunately for their ship and it’s suddenly depleted shields, the debris cloud thinned out the closer they got to Yavin IV.  From orbit, the jungle moon seemed to be untouched and intact, which was a massive relief to Cassian in and of itself, but he still didn’t understand why no one was answering the comm.

Cassian brought the ship in, skimming low over the treetops for several klicks, as per regulation, before finally spotting the solid and still standing ziggurat that marked the location of the Rebel base.  He and Iella landed the ship smoothly on the outskirts of the main hangar which was absolutely buzzing with activity.  Huge clusters of people, all of them shouting, hugging one another, or giving whoops of delight, were gathered around the few ships and x-wings sitting proudly in their positions in the hangar bay.

Cassian and the others shared a last look of apprehension and confusion before abandoning the cockpit to make for the boarding ramp on the port side of the ship.  Cassian kept his hand on his blaster, but didn’t draw it.  This was his home after all, it was just all the unusual activity that had him on edge.  From the way Iella and Jyn positioned themselves behind and slightly to the sides of him, their own weapons within easy reach, he wasn’t the only one concerned with the lack of usual protocol.

They made it several paces away from the ramp before someone finally broke free from the edge of the crowd to come greet them.

“Huh,” Cassian heard Jyn comment.

“What is it?” He asked, wondering if she had spotted something that he hadn’t.  His eyes were on the figure coming toward them, slowly resolving into a familiar shape.

“Nothing really.  Just that freighter.  It’s a Corellian YT-1300 just like the ship that—”

“Andor? Unbelievable,” interrupted the incredulous voice of General Draven.  He was shaking his head like he couldn’t believe they were standing there in front of him, but he seemed to be smiling anyway.  Cassian hadn’t thought Draven was capable of such an expression, it was unsettling.  “Wessiri, your skills once again prove to be invaluable.  Where did you find them?”

“Tatooine, sir.  Speaking of which, the _Tantive IV_ was hit pretty hard and by now has probably been picked apart by salvage gangs.  No luck with the pod transponder signal either, since the crash site was crawling with stormtroopers.  But apparently I didn’t miss much anyway.”

Draven raised an eyebrow at her summary of events.  “I’ll be interested in your full report, but you can deal with it tomorrow. Everyone gets the rest of today off.  Not like I could stop the celebrating if I tried.”

That was the last straw for Cassian.  The whole base was never given time off all at the same time, and he couldn’t ignore the blatant laughter and joy coming from all the pilots, techs, weapons officers, signals corps, everyone.  He needed information.  “General, what happened?  And what was with the debris cloud surrounding the planet?”

Draven actually laughed.  “That, Captain Andor, is all that’s left of the Death Star.”

“What?”

“How?”

“When did it happen?”

Cassian, Jyn, and Iella all burst out with questions at the same time.  Jyn turned to stare at the sky, but of course there was nothing to see. 

“I guess you won’t be needing this then,” Cassian said and pulled out the datacard with the plans he’d kept close since Jyn had handed them to him in the escape pod.

The General accepted the datacard, still smiling.  “You certainly took no chances with making sure the information got back to us.  Efficient as always.  Well done, Andor.”

“It wasn’t just me,” he gestured at Jyn who was standing at his side, seemingly stunned into silence, but was referring to the rest of the _Rogue One_ crew and the other Rebels who had given their lives for the information contained on the datacard in Draven’s hand.

“Ah yes, Miss Erso,” he said with an expression that indicated his reluctant gratitude and clear preference that someone with more training and loyalty to the Rebellion had been the one to survive.  “The Alliance is indebted to you for your contributions at the Battle of Scarif.”

“It’s Sergeant Erso actually,” Jyn corrected as she took up a defiant stance.  Draven raised an eyebrow at her assertion.  “Lieutenant Sefla breveted me the rank on Scarif.  I think it has a nice ring to it, don’t you?” 

Cassian couldn’t stop the smile that crawled over his lips at Jyn’s challenging stare and insistence that she be allowed to join up.  It meant she wanted to stay.  She had made the decision all on her own too, so he knew that it was what she really wanted, and there were no outside pressures swaying her decision.  Her announcement made him happier than he could remember being in years.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Draven grumbled.  He turned back to address Cassian and Iella, “Get to the medbay and get yourselves checked out.  Andor, we’ll discuss your actions tomorrow before the evacuation protocol goes into effect.  Wessiri, you’ll be glad to know that Antilles survived the Death Star run.”

“Seriously, I’m married!  What is it with you people and your insistence that I have a thing for pilots?”

“Until I meet him, I’m not going to believe he’s real.  I’ll let Senator Mothma know you’ve returned Andor.” The General turned to go find the leader of the Alliance.

“Wait,” Jyn called out to stop Draven.  “What did you mean you’ll discuss Cassian’s ‘actions’ tomorrow?”

He turned back to face Jyn, his usual expression of cold indifference back on his face.  “Captain Andor disobeyed direct orders and suborned a detachment of soldiers for his own use which lead to the deaths of numerous Rebellion soldiers and pilots as well as millions of credits worth of loss or damage to the Fleet,” Draven said severely.  “As well intended and ultimately successful as his actions were, there will still be consequences for his disobedience.”

“Are you serious?” Jyn’s question was outraged.  Her usual fire and anger bubbling to the surface once again.  Cassian was glad that it was on his behalf this time and not aimed at him.  “Cassian did what was necessary despite all the obstacles and lack of support from your council.  He deserves a kriffing medal for everything he did to—”

“Jyn,” Cassian said quietly, putting a hand on her arm to stop her tirade.  Her description of his heroism was embarrassing, if somewhat gratifying, but also unnecessary.  “It’s alright.  I broke my oath to the Rebellion and got hundreds of people killed.  I’ll accept whatever reprimand the High Command sees fit to give me.”

She scowled and crossed her arms over her chest to glare at Draven as he nodded his approval of Cassian’s words and walked away.  “I still don’t like him,” she muttered.

“You’re not the only one,” Iella said with a scowl of her own.

“He has to look out for the actual people of the Rebellion whereas Mothma and the Council are more concerned with preserving the political views of the Alliance.  He’s forced to make some hard decisions,” Cassian explained.

“He’s not the only general in the Rebellion forces.  He should have help with the hard decisions, which means he could try not to be a bastard all the time,” said Jyn.

“You’re not exactly the friendliest of people all the time either, Sergeant.”

“Fair enough,” Jyn replied, but there was a small smile tugging at her lips when he used her new rank.  It made him smile just to say it.

“Uh oh,” Iella suddenly interjected in a low voice.  Cassian followed her line of sight to see Wedge Antilles approaching them, his pilot’s helmet still tucked under his arm.  “I think I’m just going to go join the fun elsewhere.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Cassian grabbed hold of her arm and didn’t allow her to squirm away.

“I’m never rescuing you again, Andor,” Iella muttered in retaliation.  Jyn looked between the pilot and the subtly struggling woman with interest.

“It’s good to see you alive Andor,” Wedge said when he stopped in front of them.  He held out his hand to Cassian who relinquished his hold on Iella’s arm to grasp it.

“Thank you, Wedge.”

The pilot turned to eye Iella before addressing her.  “Wessiri, it’s a pleasure as always,” he said carefully.

“Likewise.”  She seemed to struggle with whether or not to say more or just make her escape, so Cassian gave her a pointed eyebrow, and she relented.  “Draven implied that you had a hand in taking out the Death Star.”

A quick flash of pride stole over Wedge’s face for a moment before he schooled his expression into a relaxed smile.  “I just flew support.  A new recruit named Skywalker did all the fancy shooting with some last minute help from a smuggler called Solo.  Both of whom arrived on base a few hours before the Death Star showed up in the company of Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan and a couple of very valuable droids.”  He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe the story himself.

“Solo?” Jyn asked then turned to stare in shock at the disreputable looking old freighter she had been eyeing earlier.  “Han Solo?  You mean that really is the _Millennium Falcon_?  That’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!” She exclaimed in wonder.

“So we’ve been made aware,” Wedge said in a tone that made it clear Solo had been boasting to everyone and anyone who would listen.  “Anyway, even if we destroyed it, we still have you two and the rest of your crew to thank for getting the plans off Scarif in the first place.”

Cassian hesitated before asking his next question, but he had to know.  “Did anyone else make it off Scarif?”  Jyn’s attention was suddenly very sharply focused on the X-wing pilot, all thoughts of famous smuggling ships seemingly forgotten.

“Some of the Blues that pulled out as soon as the shield went down, a fair portion of both Red and Gold Squadrons and about a third of the fleet that participated in the battle,” Wedge said, but he seemed to know that Cassian wasn’t only asking about the Alliance’s ships.  He sighed.  “Only one troop transport with about six pretty banged up people made it away from the beach in time.  I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, Wedge,” he said again, this time in a low voice full of regret.  It was worse than Cassian had hoped, but honestly six men was better than he expected.

“Hey Wedge!” Someone called from among the crowd further in the hangar.  Wedge turned toward the voice and grinned as he spotted two of his fellow orange jumpsuited pilots hovering near the edge of the celebration and waving at him frantically.  “We’re going to break out Janson’s bottle of good Corellion whiskey, just for you!”

“How did you talk him into that?” Wedge called back.

“There was blackmail involved!” the pilot who must have been Janson yelled in mock outrage.

Wedge laughed and even Iella joined in.  Cassian who was familiar with the antics of x-wing pilots couldn’t help but chuckle.  Jyn also had an amused smile on her face, even her eyes seemed to dance with merriment.

“Nice move, Hobbie!” Wedge complimented.  “I’ll be right there!”  He turned back toward Iella, laughter still lighting up his expression.  “Care to join us, Wessiri?”

Iella was visibly struggling with her desire to avoid the conspiracy to push her and Wedge into a close friendship – a very real, Rebellion-wide conspiracy that had an extremely large, under the table betting pool on whether or not they would ever actually get together at some point, Iella’s never present husband easily forgotten – and her desire to engage in some actual fun and drinking on base.

Cassian gave her a small nudge.  “Go on, Wessiri.  Let loose a bit.  If you get them drunk enough you can probably clean out the entire squadron in just five rounds of sabaac.”

That seemed to tip her decision.  “That sounds like a plan I could support, but only if you promise to actually take a night off too, Andor.  In fact, I’m putting Erso in charge of making sure you don’t touch a datapad until tomorrow.”  Jyn smirked at her instructions and gave Iella that same mock salute Cassian himself had seen on multiple occasions.  “Alright, Antilles, lead on.  I always knew Janson was holding out on us.”

Wedge smiled broadly and walked off with Iella to find his cohorts.

“I’m not sure if you just did that pilot any favors.  I have no doubt that Iella could beat them all with her eyes closed,” Jyn said. 

Cassian too was fairly certain that a good portion of the Rebellion’s fighter pilots were going to have severe dents in their savings in the morning.  “But Wedge will probably enjoy every moment of getting trounced.  And Janson is always good for a laugh so Iella will actually have some fun too.”

He turned to fully face her and found Jyn studying him with a smile.  He got caught in her gaze, fascinated by the easy expression he saw there.  “I’ll have you know,” she began in a teasing tone, “I intend to follow my orders for the evening with an appropriate level of enthusiasm.”

“Is that so?” He said in a matching tone, but he was still captured by her brilliant gray-green eyes.  Staring into their multi-colored depths he thought he understood where her father’s childhood name for her came from – there was stardust in her eyes to go with the fire in her soul.  Yet the smile that lit her lips as she turned to stare up at a clear sky, free of deadly threats, was one of contentment.  The peaceful expression on her face was one that Cassian hadn’t seen on her before under any of the aliases she had worn.  He wanted to help make this a new start for Jyn, one where she knew without a doubt that she belonged somewhere.

He looked down at her and waited for her to meet his eyes again.  “Your father would be proud of you, Jyn,” he told her.  It was important that she knew that.

Jyn’s smile stretched briefly before a hint of sadness crossed her expression.  One of her hands came up to rest on the kyber crystal that sat at the base of her throat.  Her other hand reached for his and tangled their fingers together.  She didn’t say anything else to him, but Cassian didn’t need her to.  Instead they stood side by side, hands tightly clasped, just on the edge of the celebration surrounding them and watched the sky, looking up into a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> The Huttese translations: (Based on translators found on the internet so the accuracy is within a certain tolerance)
> 
> This sa doe bunko of doe Illustrious Jabba doe Hutt. Doe Empire sa nopa chowbaso unko. - This is the palace of the Illustrius Jabba the Hutt. The Empire is not welcome here.
> 
> Mee will take u tah Jabba ateema. - I will take you to Jabba now.
> 
> Cha too ma laya conky, ya neema loka nyan chone kava doompa D'emperiolo stoopa tah je refuse. - Soon you will learn to appreciate me and you're a low-down Imperial fool to refuse me.
> 
>  
> 
> A couple of things. First, I don't know why I decided that there was a conspiracy about Wedge and Iella, but it made me laugh so I left it in. It's probably my desire to have certain characters from Legends canon reinstated shining through. I've always loved Iella, Winter, Tycho, and Wedge for that matter. Secondly, throughout this whole series the majority of the locations and a fair few of the people are or at one time were a part of Star Wars canon in some form. So if you have a desire to know more about Brentaal, Talus, the Imperial base on Talus, Toprawa, Talon Karrde, Dash Rendar, the Devastator, etc. I encourage you to look them up on ye olde Wookieepedia.
> 
> I hope you had fun reading! Feel free to leave a comment, question, or concern should you wish to. Thanks and may the Force be with you!


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